The ^ame Old Fool. 



By MAXIMUS. 



- WHAT FOOLS THESE MORTALS BE." 




1 ;^-'-^ 29 189b 



ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, 



INDEX. 



PART FIRST. 

PAGE 
Title 1 

Preface 3 

First Old Fool 5 

Second Old Fool 7 

Literary Infldel 9 

The Critical Old Fool 14 

PART SECOND. 

The Same Old Fool in Society.....:. '... 17 

The Witty Old Fool 19 

The Solid Old Fool 22 

The Ancestral Old Fool 32 

The Foreign Traveled Old Fool 35 

The Untraveled Old Fool...^..'. 38 

The Worldly- Wise Old Fool 41 

The Money-Loving Old Fool 43 

The Punctilious Old Fool 47 

The 0])tiinistic Old Fool 50 

The Pessimistic Old Fool 53 

The Self-Made Old Fool 56 

The Fashionable Old Fool 59 

The Curious Old Fool 64 

The Officious Old Fool 66 

The Sensitive Old Fool 69 

The Conscientious Old Fool 70 

PART THIRD. 

The Mechanical Old Fool 72 

The Agricultural Old Fool 76 

The Medical Old Fool 78 

The Legal Old Fool 80 

The Literary Old Fool 82 



PART FOURTH. 

The Prophetic Old Fool ^ 

The Weather-Wise Old Fool 88 

The Practical Old Fool 91 

The Strictly Business Old Fool 95 

The Business-Hating Old Fool 97 

The Common-Sense Old Fool 100 

The Editorial Old Fool 102 

The Impecunious Old Fool 10* 

The Materialistic Old Fool 108 

The Opposite Old Fool HI 

The Woman-Hating Old Fool H^ 

The Man-Hating Old Fool H^ 

The Mathematical Old Fool 119 

The Financial Old Fool 121 

PART FIFTH. 

The Political Old Fool 124 

PART SIXTH. 

The Sectional Old Fools 130 

The Central Old Fool 150 

The Western Old Fool 151 

The Pacific Old Fool 15* 

The Southern Old Fool 156 

The European Old Fool 165 

PART SEVENTH. 

The Clerical Old Fool • I'^l 

The Ignorant Old Fool 1'''3 

The Learned Old Fool : 1"* 

The Strict Construction Old Fool v. 1'^'*' 

The Easy-Going Old Fool 1"9 

The Monopolistic Old Fool ^..181 

The Compromising Old Fool 183 

The Uncompromising Old Fool 187 

The Controversial Old Fool 189 

The Sensational Old Fool 191 

The Superstitious Old Fool 196 

The Sceptical Old Fool 205 

The Progressive Old Fool 208 

The Sanctified Old Fool 210 

The Last Old Fool 214 



The Same Old Fool 



BY 



^ MAXIMUS. 





<^,^1 OF CO^^ 

^^-'^ 29 1895 



"What Fools These Mortals Be."— PUCK. Aj^ 



FIRST EDITION. 

1895. 






PREFACE. 



It is said that short payments make long friends. We 
are not sure, however, that brief prefaces make long 
books, for we have seen books in which the preface was 
everything and the book nothing. But to characterize: 
There are books with long prefaces, short prefaces, and 
others with none at all. Extent, then, in this matter, is 
purely a question of judgment and taste on the part of 
the writer. We may observe, however, that nearly all 
biographers indulge in long prefaces for reasons quite 
manifest to a discerning person. When bread is plenti- 
ful and butt«r scarce, the latter is made to spread 
over as much of the surface of the staff of life as possi- 
ble. When an orator is not sure of an audience he in- 
dulges in much prefatory skirmishing in order to dis- 
cover the strong or weak points of the opposition, as the 
case may be, or at least prepare their minds for unpleas- 
ant truths by advancing gradually until the frown of 
prejudice is chased away by the smile of approval. 

As we are dealing with a very sensitive individual in 
the present instance, prudence suggests that we pursue 
the same conciliatory policy. But we are met with the 
gratifying reflection that not one of our readers will 
imagine for a moment that we have any reference to 
him, but to the other fellow. In consequence we ap- 
proach the citadel of our subject with a great deal more 
boldness than we otherwise would. 

First, then, as to our subject. It has been said that 
^'history repeats itself." Whoever made that assertion 
might have gone a great deal further without doing 
violence to either truth or experience. Why, nearly 
everything in the universe repeats itself, and along with 
the rest (only a thousand fold more so than anything 
else), the Same Old Fool repeats himself. And we are 



eorry to add that each succeeding edition is worse than 
the first. 

Observant people have noticed the tendency of scien- 
tists, linguists, moralists and theologians to reduce every- 
thing to unity or to origin in their respective spheres. 
The scientist would reduce all the phenomena of the 
material universe to the promise and potency of Matter, 
the linguist every language to one parent stock, while all 
orthodox theologians contend for the Trinity in unity. 
Determined not to be outdone by our scientific, linguistic 
and theological brethren in the treatment of our subject, 
we, too, shall endeavor to show that every species of Old 
Fool now extant belongs to the same parent. In order 
to establish this proposition, we found it necessary to 
search past records with unusual diligence, and the re- 
sult may be seen in the first chapter of this veracious 
history. 



PART FIRST. 



CHAPTER I. 



THE FIRST OLD FOOL. 



Before giving the history of the First Old Fool, and 
going into the analysis of his character, it seems the cor- 
rect thing to define what we mean by the term "Fool." 
To begin, then: Fools are divided into three great classes, 
to-wit: Natural-born fools, circumstantial fools, and 
artificial fools. It is with the class last mentioned that 
we shall deal in this volume. And we may add that 
while our definition of the term may be a departure from 
Webster and Worcester, we have eminent authority on 
our side, being no less than the Word of God itself, for 
does not St. Paul say, "Professing themselves wise, they 
became fools." This, then, is the kind of a fool we are 
after in these pages — the one who imagines he knows it 
all. And we shall be so impartial in the treatment of 
our subject as to give each Old Fool the benefit of a 
whole chapter devoted exclusively to himself or herself. 

Being of an inquiring turn of mind, especially as re- 
gards the early history of distinguished men and women, 
and realizing that such a noted character as the Same 
Old Fool must have had an ancestry reaching backwards 
almost to the Garden of Eden, for history, ancient as 
well as modern is far, from being silent concerning the 
doings of his descendants, we could never rest until we 
had found out all about the original of such an illustri- 
ous family. And we might as well add here that our 
researches, compared with the similar labors of others, 
have been crowned with eminent success. We have not 
only discovered who the First Old Fool was, but even 
had the good fortune to learn what manner of man he 
was. When we take into account that. notwithstanding 



the fact that Homer was one of the greatest of poets, 
and yet all we know of him is, that he is the reputed au- 
thor of his own poems, and notwithstanding all that has 
been written of Shakespeare, all we know is, that he shot 
Sir Lucy's deer in his youth, and planted a mulberry 
tree in his old age, we are inclined to flatter ourselves 
upon the completeness of ourwork. 

The manner in which we made our discovery of the 
First Old Fool was a mere accident, after all. After 
having exhausted the texts of all tie profane manu- 
scripts of antiquity, many of which were written by him- 
self, but i^hich, unfortunately, threw no light on his 
family history, in sheer desperation we began a perusal 
of the Old Testament. Imagine our surprise, as well as 
joy, when, opening the book one fine morning, the 
first sentence that met our eyes was this: "The fool 
hath said in his heart, there is no God." We could 
hardly credit our own eyesight. Surely the First Old 
Fool recorded in history was not an atheist, and that, 
too, in spite of the fact that the atheist of to-day claims 
all the knowledge going, claims to have solved all the 
problems of the universe, and now shown to be the First 
Old Fool on record. But there it was in cold type, in 
one of the oldest books in the world, without one miti- 
gating line about it. It was too bad ! 

There is no use, however, in our atheistic friends of 
to-day trying to deny it. They might as well own up. 
Their very speech betrayeth them, for it bears the ear- 
marks of their original. They still say, "There is no 
God." 

Now, some people are so weak as to believe there is 
much wisdom in saying "There is no God." King 
David, who was acquainted with the First Old Fool, was 
of a different opinion, for after trying to reason with 



him he discovered he had no head to speak of, and ex- 
claimed, "The fool hath said in his heart (not his head) 
ther« is no God." Oh, no; it does not require any brains 
to say "There is no God." Only meanness, and % 
sight of it. 

CHAPTER II. 

THE SECOND OLD FOOL. 

The next Old Fool to which we invite your attention 
is the Scientific Infidel. This specimen is a younger 
brother of the atheist. He does not, like his older 
brother, deny the existence of God without rhyme or 
reason, but claims to be in possession of certain facts 
which enable mankind to get along very well without 
one. Like the fox which had lost his tail and then 
tried to persuade all the other foxes to cut off theirs as 
a useless appendage, so he, having lost all respect for 
himself, as well as his Maker, and being lonesome, would 
fain persuade all men to believe as he does. 

One of the greatest lights in the kingdom of Scienti- 
fic Fools, Professor Tyndall says that matter has the 
promise as well as the potency of all things terrestrial 
as well as heavenly, which is the same thing as saying 
that Matter has all power in heaven as well as earth. 
As this is all any christian ever claimed for the Al- 
mighty, all the difference anyone can see, who has any 
common sense, is one of mere names. If the christian 
chooses to call his God Jehovah, and the Scientific Infi- 
del to denominate his, Matter, and they possess the 
same attributes, what right has the Scientific Infidel to 
accuse the enlightened christian of "superstition ?" The 
superstition is all on the other side. 



The materialist is like the sculptor of Greek history. 
Moved by the genius of his own nature and the aspira- 
tion of his own nation, he embodied in spotless marble, 
ideal beauty, strength and grace. He gave the statue to 
his country-men, and they, alas ! worshiped it as a god. 
Materialists find Matter impressed by certain laws, ar- 
ranged in beautiful forms, and they set it up with energy 
and space and worship it as a god, having the promise 
as well as the potency of all things terrestrial as well as 
heavenly. Not the truly great minds of the world do 
this; not the profound thinkers of our day do this, but 
partial thinkers — men devoid of intuition — men, im- 
pervious to the noblest conceptions who thus empty God 
of divinity, of intellect, of emotion, and put in place 
thereof "physical properties." 

True science, however, is the hand-maid of religion 
and a foe to superstition. The Apostle Paul, whom all 
Scientific Infidels hate, ^vas one of its ablest expounders, 
and first enunciated its principles in the very seat of so- 
called philosophy itself. His speech delivered on Mar's 
Hill at Athens nearly 2,000 years ago, was one of the 
most masterful appeals for the existence of God from 
the standpoint of human reason that ever fell from the 
lips of man. In it he says nothing of protoplasmic 
cells, of embryonic life, of Philosophic Evolution, but 
speaks of the unknown God of Greece as one in whom 
we live and move, and have our being, as the gracious 
sender of the fruitful shower, and concerning whom 
their own poets had claimed them to be his own off- 
spring. That speech has never been answered and never 
will be. It has survived the sophistry of Hume, the 
cynicism of Voltaire, the rhetoric of Gibbon, the vul- 
garity of Paine, and it will Outlive the blasphemy of In- 
gersoll. In comparison to it, Darwin's "Descent of 





Man" is as mud to marble, "Hyperion to a Satyr," or a 
chattering monkey to a "myriad-minded" Shakspeare. 
Never was a book better named than Darwin's. The 
"Descent of Man" is the tendency of all modern infi- 
delity. Having denied God, its next step is to degrade 
man. If any one can hesitate as to whether God 
made man in his own image, or whether he evoluted 
from a monkey, with all due deference to such a man, 
whether a Scientific Infidel or any other fool, we give it 
as our deliberate opinion, if he should finally decide in 
favor of the monkey, that his remote ancestor was the 
more sensible of the two. 



CHAPTER III. 

The next Old Fool is the literary infidel: He is a 
twin brother to the Scientific, occupying the same posi- 
tion in the world of letters that his brother does in the 
field of science. As the scientific "Old Fool" regards 
every scientist, who still adheres to the word of God as 
fossil of a pre-scientific age, so the literary one looks 
upon all writers who still believe in its inspiration, as 
poor, weak mortals deserving their pity, if not their con- 
tempt. 

One of the most eminent instances of the literary and 
oratorical fools combined, is Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll. 
The nineteenth century has been one pre-eminently of 
invention and innovation, and the Colonel was bent on 
keeping up with the procession. He thinks he has 
made two wonderful discoveries. The first he entitles 
"The Mistakes of Moses," and the other, "There is no 
God." 



10 

We have not learned whether he has applied for a 
patent or not, but we are persuaded they will both be re- 
jected on the grounds of "previous discovery," as a syn- 
dicate of inventors, consisting of Korah, Dathan and 
Abiram laid claim to the first discovery of the "Mis- 
takes of Moses." We are sorry to add that they did not 
discover their own until too late. Although we have 
already shown that the first "Old Fool" recorded in his- 
tory said **there was no God," yet, wishing to learn the 
merits of the Colonel's invention, we have examined it 
thoroughly and find the following claims set forth by 
Robert. He says that what has heretofore been con- 
sidered a master- wheel in the machinery of the universe, 
and which, for want of a better name, we call God, is 
only a clog or fifth wheel to the wagon, and should be 
dispensed with. He claims that the elimination of this 
useless piece of machinery will reduce the cost of living 
to a minimun. We believe this, for in all countries 
where it has been tried, houses and clothing have been 
discarded and every one replenishes his larder with 
the flesh of his enemy. As fat men in those coun- 
tries are preferred to lean, and as the Colonel inclines to 
emhonnepoint, he would no doubt meet the fate he covets 
by becoming a martyr to his principles It is true he is 
old and is a tough subject, but perhaps after boiling 
him a couple of days they might get most of the agnas- 
ticism out of him. Ah, Yes ! We believe his invention 
under favorable conditions would be a great success, and 
we trust Congress may pass an appropriation sufficient 
to pay the expenses of Colonel Ingersoll and his friends 
to the Cannibal Islands that they may witness the full 
effects of the discovery that there is no God. 

As to the "Mistakes of Moses," we have no doubt that 
"Bob" is the man to point them out. It requires one 



11 

great man to criticise another, especially when lie ha« 
had experiences similar to his subject. Moses was a 
soldier, lawyer and prophet. So is Robert. Thelatter's 
military career, however, was much briefer and more 
brilliant than that of Moses. The gallant Colonel com- 
manded a cavalry regiment during the late war, was 
taken prisoner by General Forrest and exchanged for an 
army mule. Moses, on the other hand, did nothing ex- 
cept to lead an army of three millions of men, women 
and children through the deserts of Arabia where food 
and water were scarce. And even this little job took 
him forty years, whereas could the dashing Robert have 
been in command, rather than fail, he would have swap- 
ped off his entire host for an army mule and ridden in- 
to Canaan, solitary and alone. We have no doubt of 
this, for Bob generally "gets there" whenever there is an 
inducement to do so. 

There has been an unbroken succession in the line of 
the Literary Old Fools. Some of this line have been 
quite famous, and in their day and time, had quite a fol- 
lowing. But they, one and all, show by their lives, no 
less. than by their language, that they are of a common 
origin. The conceit of the moderw specimen, however, 
is almost fabulous. They not only believe they possess 
a monopoly of all the truths in the universe, but regard 
it as one of their sole missions on earth to impart it to 
others. Sometimes it is delivered to mankind in the 
guise of a novel, sometimes in the shape of a lecture, 
but most frequently in the form of an abandoned life in 
which all decency is thrown to the winds. We have 
already noticed that the first Old Fool on record said 
there was no God. But since an infidel will believe 
nothing handed down, in every age his brethien have 
claimed "There is no God" as an original discovery. 



12 

And this, by the way, small as it is, the only piece of 
originality that infidelity has ever been accused of. 
While Christianity has discovered that there is a God, and 
in consequence, has erected hospitals for the sick in body, 
churches for the sick of soul, while it gives sight to the 
blind and life to the dead, and while it has carried light 
and immortality to such as sat in darkness and the 
shadow of death, while it has sweetened every life that 
ever embraced it, and in the hour of dissolution robbed 
death of its terrors, what has infidelity done in the past 
and what is it doing to day but to sub^rt faith in God 
and man, to impair the sacredness of marriage by try- 
ing to prove it a failure, to impair the value of life by 
trying to prove it not worth living. Their inner-con- 
sciousness no doubt, causes them to come to this conclu- 
sion, for if ever any one made a complete failure in life 
it is an infidel. What an Old Fool he is to be sure ! 
You may always tell one of these Old Fools by the fol- 
lowing ear-marks: If educated, he imagines there is 
not another such direful word in the language as "super- 
stition." And yet, strange as it might seem to one un- 
acquainted with such frauds as he is, he will not con- 
tribute one cent towards getting it out of the world by 
the only method which has ever proved successful, 
Another ear-mark is his pretended disbelief in anything 
supernatual except himself. This follows of course, as 
he considers himself no ordinary mortal. Well, he is 
hardly an ordinary mortal. Quite frequently he pub- 
lishes a book with some new scheme of the univ( rse, 
(each one always has a new scheme, for none of the old 
ones will work,) in which such high-sounding words as 
protoplasmic cells. Philosophic Evolution occur, and 
which are about as intelligible to the majority of their 
readers as the hieroglyphic inscriptions to be found upon 



13 

an Assyrian monument would be. Or perhaps he essays 
the role of fiction (his legitimate sphere) and evolves 
from his inner consciousness a lot of cranks, male and 
female, who go poking their noses through all the 
pages of the Bible, into every mystery of redemption, 
while ignoring the exalted morality of the New Testa- 
ment. They get along swimmingly until they come to 
something they cacnot understand, and then, good-bye 
inspiration. Inspiration is to blame for it all. Any- 
thing they cannot understand is incomprehensible of 
course. But the beauty of the whole thing is, the world 
is full of just such fools who buy the book; the chris- 
tian does the same in order to see what sort of an egg 
this new cockatrice has hatched out. And so between 
the two he feathers his own nest, which was the object 
he had in view when he began. 

These are the usual concomitants of the Literary In- 
fidel. Sometimes, as in the <"ase of Ingersoll, he mounts 
the lecture platform and descants at so much a head on 
the "Mistakes of Moses." No christian would, however, 
attempt to point out the Mistakes of Ingersoll. That 
would be a task beyond his powers, and so he concludes 
to let the Mistakes of Moses take care of themselves as 
they have been doing for about 4,000 years and will con- 
tinue to do until the end of time. 



CHAPTER IV. 



THE CRITICAL OLD POOL. 



We enter into a wide field when we step into that oc- 
cupied by the Critical Old Fool. In fact, he will not 
content himself with a field. He wants the earth. Of 
all the Old Fools, he is the most wide-spread and numer- 
ous. You will find him everywhere, and no matter 
where you find him, you will at once recognize him as a 
chip from the same block. He knows it all. If he is a 
believer in Revelation, the passage therein, which reads, 
"Let us make man in our own image," he considers as re- 
ferring especially to himself, as the man meant. And it 
must be confessed on the score of omniscience and ubi- 
quity, he does bear a striking resemblance to his Maker. 
As a judge of history, science, literature, art, religion, 
morals, manners and taste, he is pre-eminent. Let a 
historian by patient research and enormous literary la- 
bor endeavor to give his fellowmen the benefit of facts, 
culled from every available source, and the Critical Old 
Fool will at once "smell a mouse," and set his little rat- 
trap of a brain to catch it. If the historian inadvertent- 
ly makes a mistake as to a date or some other inconse- 
quential fact, this "smart Aleck" of a critic will at once 
proceed to make a mountain out of a mole hill. On the 
other hand should the dates and facts be correct, why 
then he will say, "the author's style is execrable." But 
if facts, dates and style all be correct, why in that case 
he will say nothing at all, implying thereby, that any- 



15 

thins; with which he cannot find fault is not worthy of 
notice. Indeed, he so demeans himself, as if he thought 
the most distinguished of mankind should esteem it a 
personal favor, on his part, as well as a great compli- 
ment to themselves, to be noticed by him at all. I am 
sorry to add that some people do seem to consider it a 
compliment sure enough to get a "vicious dig in the 
ribs" from these gentry. They are like the Irishman, 
who went over to London, and being asked if he saw the 
Queen, replied, "Faix and be sure I did ! Why bless me 
sowl, and didn't her Gracious Majesty spake to me." 
Being questioned as to the words addressed to him by 
her Majesty, he replied with every evidence of pleasure, 
"Why she axed me to git out of her way." 

In Science, the Critical Old Fool disputes the data of 
men, who have devoted their lives to it, while only 
possessing a smattering of it himself. 

In Literature, it is the same thing. If an infidel, he 
can write a better book than the Bible. If not, he can 
write a better play than Shakspeare, a better poem than 
Milton, a better history than Macaulay. And yet, he 
never writes one. He can preach a better sermon than 
Doddridge or Barrow, compose a more meritorious ora- 
tioD than Demosthenes. And yet he never opens his 
mouth in the pulpit or upon the rostrum, except for 
pay. What a pity that so much perfection should be 
lost to mankind on account of other people's poverty. 
Oh ! the immeasurable conceit required to constitute a 
first-class Critical Old Fool ! Although producing noth- 
ing, he is capable of all things. In theology he not only 
points out the "Mistakes of Moses" himself, but knows 
more about divinity in one short hour than Augustine, 
John Calvin, James Arminius, Martin Luther or John 
Wesley ever dreamed of. In medicine, although never 



16 

inside of a medical college or a dissecting room, he yet 
knows more about materia medica and anatomy than the 
most eminent practitioner or surgeon in the land. In 
business he is an adept. He knows why this man suc- 
ceeds and that one fails much better than they know it 
themselves. As to newspapers, he is a born editor, and 
criticises the poor devil who edits one, without mercy. 
In art, although he cannot draw the outlines of a coffee- 
pot correctly, he yet points out to admiring dunces the 
defects of Michael Angelo, Da Viuei and Rafael and 
Rubens with ease in "words of learned length and thun- 
derous sound." As to education generally, he is im- 
mense, knowing everything intuitively. If a teacher 
makes haste slowly in adopting new methods, he calls 
him an old fogy. On the other hand, should he seek to 
improve upon former methods, he rails at him for adopt- 
ing what he terms "new-fangled notions." But the 
Critical Old Fool is just simply inexhaustible, and we 
drop him. 



PART SECOND. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE SAME OLD FOOL IN SOCIETY. 

It was Lord Bjron, we believe, who wrote that "Fools 
rush in where angels fear to tread." Now, any one not 
acquainted with the peculiar characteristics that consti- 
tute the Same Old Fool would imagine, perhaps, that in 
society at least, he would not dare to show his face, 
much less open his mouth. Sad mistake! He is not 
only there in full force, but aspires to leadership like he 
does everywhere else. He cuts so many different capers 
and assumes so many different roles that it is a difficult 
matter to recognize him as one and the Same Old Fool 
you have encountered elsewhere. But he is though. 
Sometimes he is seen in the person of one newly rich. 
You may always know him when you are in his presence 
by his opening remarks. He is generally open in this 
respect at all hours, except when asleep, and we incline 
to the opinion that his mouth, even then, is wide open 
and that he talks about himself. Before giving you a 
catalogue of his goods and chattels, financial standing 
and splendid social position, he always prefaces all this 
by saying, "Sir, I am a self-made man." If the old 
"pudding-head" had not conceived the idea he was 
"some pumpkins" he would never make such a remark 
as that, for instead of creating the impression he covets 



18 

he does just the reverse, enabling all sensible people to 
see at once that he is telling the truth. He is utterly 
unmmdful, however, of the only meritorious part of his 
declaration, for in boasting of his own creation he re- 
lieves the Lord of a fearful responsibility. 

This specimen verily believes that money will pur- 
chase everything, including brains, respectability and 
social position. In consequence of this, if any one shows 
a disposition to shun him, he imagines they do so for 
want of sufficient sense to appreciate him, and not for 
any lack of engaging qualities on his part. Now, we 
we do not mean to imply that the newly-rich Old Fool 
is without a plausible reason for entertaining such an 
exalted opinion of himself. He is unable to perceive 
that his acquaintances worship his money instead of 
himself. That is where the joke comes in. But the 
Old Fool is ambitious. He supplies his sons, if he has 
any, with plenty of money and fast horses, and his 
"gals" with each and every recurring fad of the season. 
And we may add that the children of a newly-rich Old 
Fool always improve upon the parental edition, and 
carry the example set by '^pappy" and "mammy" to the 
most ridiculous extent. Although he began his own ca- 
reer by sleeping in a hay-loft and living on ash-cake and 
buttermilk, he brings up his children in idleness and 
luxury. And why? That he may obtain recognition 
from people who really think less of him now than when 
he was poor. Then he did have a little sense and some 
honest pride about him. Now, with all his wealth, he 
is nothing but a lick-spittle and a sycophant. We have 
heard much and read much in derision of Southern 
aristocracy, but we have never encountered such an Old 
Fool among them as this. Their exclusiveness was based 
on very valid reasons in most instances, and the efforts 



19 

put fortb by such an "old goose" as we are describing, 
to get within what he considers their charmed circle, is 
not the least among them. It requires an amount of 
conceit that is colossal, and a lack of sense that is phe- 
nomenal for any one to suppose that he will be welcome 
where he is not wanted. 

But we said the newly-rich Old Fool is under the im- 
pression that money will purchase brains also. It can 
and does procure their employment, but never their be- 
fitowment. You may give a man an idea, but God alone 
can give him the power to comprehend it. But like all 
the rest of the Old Fools, the Newly-Rich knows it all, 
and will not listen to you when you try to advise him. 

CHAPTER 11. 

THE WITTY OLD FOOL. 

While we are well aware that Dullness rolls the maxim 
''All that glitters is not gold" as a sweet morsel under 
its tongue for obvious reasons, still at the same time we 
-find it to be true that men of wit are not usually pro- 
found. Neither are close observers of human na- 
ture, as a general rule, ever burdened with the task of 
originality or invention. Genius, whenever serviceable 
to the world, has the heart of a child and the head of a 
Titan. They are nearly always ignorant of human na- 
ture, these "divine sons and daughters of genius," and 
this, in a great measure, accounts for their failure to 
succeed as the world rates success. 

A man who has eaten of "the insane root that takes 
the reason prisoner," who has caught strains of "the 
eternal melodies," who is content to have plain living in 
order that he may €njoy high thinking, lives apart from 



20 

the "madding crowds," "ignoble strife," the great 
school of human nature, which he that is of the earth 
earthy finds so congenial a field. 

There are, however, some notable exceptions to this. 
There have been wits who were also wise. But as a rule 
the flash of wit and the ray of wisdom seem incompatible. 

But there is a species of humanity who, on account of 
certain characteristics, well deserve, the title of the 
Witty Old Fool. This Old Fool has been called a wit 
so often by greater fools than himself, that he really be- 
lieves he is one sure enough. Now, we venture the as- 
sertion without the fear of successful contradiction that 
not one in a hundred of them knows what wit really is. 
They are under the impression that wit makes people 
laugh. But wit does nothing of the kind. 

But there is a bastard species of mechanical humor 
which always produces that effect, and hence their hal- 
lucination. One of the most eminent instances of a 
mechanical humorist is Mark Twain. He has minimized 
what is truly great^ and maximized what is really small, 
until the American head is as flat where the bump of 
veneration ought to be as a pancake. It is the pro- 
vince of genuine humor to laugh man out of his foU 
lies and vices, as did Cervantes and Fielding and Charles 
Dickens, and not to destroy all reverence for men worthy 
of veneration. 

We dare, say that such men as Twain, et id omne 
genus, have done more real harm to the people of the 
United States than all the dime novels ever published. 
The only genuine humorists our country has so far pro- 
duced, are Artemus Ward, Bill Nye, Judge Long- 
street and Joel Chandler Harris. There is an expansion 
in their humor that takes it quite out of the category of 
mechanical contrivances. As to "Bill Arp*" while pos- 



21 

sessing wit and humor, he cannot in justice be called 
either a wit or a humorist. He has neither the expan- 
jiveness of a genuine humorist, nor the brilliance of a 
true wit. But he has what is superior to both — the ro- 
bust genius of saving, common sense. His scorn of 
shams is too great to be content with the weapons of 
ridicule, and will stop nothing short of denunciation. 
His love for his fellowman is too deep for parodies on 
bis achievements. To read after such a man is to love 
him. 

But the Witty Old Fool whom we wish to put on ex- 
hibition in these pages belongs to the universal tribe. 
He has fired his little pop-gun at every genius the world 
has ever seen. He has no reverence for anything in 
Heaven or Earth. He ridiculed Moses and parodized 
Paradise Lost. He can weep at the tomb of Adam, 
caricature George Washington. He has but one am- 
bition — to create a laugh at somebody else's expense. 
He cannot take a joke himself, and "gets as mad as a 
hornet'' when you "turn the tables" on him. In com- 
pany he ( ssays the role, and becomes as great a nuisance 
as a black gnat or a mosquito, which are never in rap- 
tures except when drawing blood Good, plain, pious 
and worthy people seem to be the special objects of his 
shafts, and to raise a laugh by ridiculing some peculiar- 
ity of their dress or manner of speaking, whether in the 
pulpit or out of it (if we may judge by outward signs), 
gives him more real pleasure than anything else. Al- 
though the earth is full of frauds, shams and cheats of 
every description, he yet forsakes this legitimate field 
for the exercise of wit for the forbidden one of things 
that should be held up as models for imitation. In 
short he is 



22 

A member of that petty clan 

Who must be witty when they can, 

Not when they should; and therefore strike 

At foes and bosom friends alike. 

So as a general rule they are always loaded to the gun- 
wales with puns, innuendoes and double entendres — the 
light artillery of the Devil himself, for if there be a uni- 
versal language in Hell, it is that of sarcasm. 

Such is the Witty Old Fool — an exact antithesis of 
the one constituting the subject of the next chapter. 



CHAPTER m. 

THE SOLID OLD FOOL. 

What is termed success in life has evidently engaged 
the profoundest minds in all ages of men who were, or 
professed to be, worldly wise. But it is well enough to 
state at the very outset that the word "success" has had 
many meanings since the history of man began. In the 
days of Solomon it meant the Lumber of wives a man 
could afford to have. For instance, the Good Book no- 
where tells us that King Solomon was worth a million 
of dollars, but it states very explicitly that he had three 
hundred wives and seven hundred concubines, and that 
he was "a success" in the wife-getting line admits of no 
dispute. The next fad in the way of success was mili- 
tary glory. The fellow who, by dint of much fighting 
and physical strength, had knocked on the head the 
greater number of his enemies, was considered the most 
successful man. Religious success was the next craze. 
The lazy, and alas too often lousy, bare-footed priest, 
who pretended to subsist on acorns and water, in order 
to keep his own body lean, but who had no scruples in 



23 

"frying the fat" out of a heretic, was considered as the 
most successful man of the age. And he was, too, as 
the world rated success at that time, for he was idolized 
during life and canonized as a saint after death. Then 
came the revival of letters, and the man or woman who 
was most thoroughly acquainted with "Heathen Myth- 
ology" and could quote most glibly in the tongues by 
which it has been handed down, was considered a prodi- 
gy. In short, success and pedantry meant one and the 
same thing. Who cared anything for an ignoramus 
then, even if he was worth a million ? But as civiliza- 
tion advanced and multiplied the necessities of man, the 
word "success" took another meaning, which it has held 
ever since. And that word is "money." When you ask 
after an absent friend nowadays, and the answer comes 
that "he is very successful," you never hear anyone say 
"in what way." That is well understood. When some- 
one informs you that "Miss So-and-so has married well," 
that is understood too, although she may have married 
some old miser, eighty years old, without a tooth in his 
head, half blind and deaf as a post. It is true the young 
prostitute shows some twinges of a conscience, which 
she tries to soothe by quoting the well-known phrase, 
that "it is better to be an old man's darling than a 
young man's slave," which phrase was no doubt in- 
vented by some other young prostitute in a similar situa- 
tion, and which has proven a God-send to the whole 
tribe ever since. No doubt the reason of its invention, 
in the first instance, was owing to the fact that it was 
considered marrying well at one time if the >oung man 
was worthy, though he may have been poor. 

It was once the custom in writing marriage notices to 
conclude with some verses appropriate to the occasion. 
How would this sound at the conclusion of a notice of a 



24 

marriage between an old fool eighty years old, and a 
young woman only eighteen or twenty ? 

"Hymen, thy brightest torch prepare, 

Gild with light the nuptial bower, 
With garlands crown this lovely pair. 

On them thy choicest blessings shower. 
Cupids lightly sport and play, 
Hymen crowns the happy day. 
Sprightly graces too descend, 
And the beauteous bride attend. 
Here no sordid interests binds, (It don't) 

But purest innocence and love, (Great Heavens !) 
Combined unite their spotless minds, 

And seal their vowi above." (Below more likely) 

If Hymen prepared any torch at all on this occasion 
to gild the nuptial bower it would be simply to prevent 
the half-blind old fool from stumbling over a chair and 
breaking his neck, a consummation no doubt devoutly 
wished for by the "beauteous bride," as her sole pur- 
pose in marrying the old soft head was his money, and 
the sooner he dieg, the sooner she gets it, that is all. 

So then, we think the point is established that success 
and money mean one and the same thing, and whether 
you really think so or not you would better keep your 
mouth shut unless you wish to be set down as a crank 
of the worst description. 

Since the advent of the money era the language itself 
has undergone a complete change, for whereas when 
David Garrick over one hundred years ago was playing 
to "crowded houses" in London, if he were doing the 
same thing to-day. he would be reported as "playing to 
one thousand" or "two thousand dollar houses," as the 
case might be. It is true the phrase to a citizen of the 
last century might be a little ambigious, as he might be 
led to infer that the house in which the play was going 



. 25 

on cost two thousand dollars. But no one in this day 
and generation, when humanity itself is merged into th« 
unit of a dollar, would ever make such a mistake as 
that. 

"Responsible" is another word which the Money Era 
has wrenched from its moorings. When you ask whether 
such and such a man is "responsible," it would be con- 
sidered an evidence of intense ignorance or softening of 
the brain were you to reply that "he was an honest 
man," instead of saying that he has property. 

These two instances are sufficient to show the com- 
plete transformation which words have undergone since 
the advent of the Money Era. But as our object is to 
point out a peculiar species of Old Fool which the 
Money Age has produced, we will omit further illustra- 
tion, although we could fill a volume with them alone. 

We have just said this a^e has produced a peculiar 
species of Old Fool, and although he may have the ap- 
pearance of being the originator of his line, yet upon ex- 
amination, he will be found a member of the universal 
family, having all the ear-marks of his ancestors to any 
discerning person. We refer to the Solid Old Fool. 
This specimen by virtue of certain maxims, such as a 
"still tongue makes a wise head," "still waters run deep," 
and such like, which have been handed down from one 
generation of Solid Old Fools to another as a precious 
heir-loom in the family, has adopted them as covering 
his case exactly. 

We dislike an iconoclastic reputation, dislike to ex- 
pose the spoiled darlings of the human imagination as 
cheats and frauds. In consequence of our feelings in 
this regard we hate to inform the Solid Old Fool that 
all these phrases to which we have alluded aud to which 
he pins his faith never had their origin in the barren in- 



26 

tellect of any of his tribe. They were written by men 
of wit in sheer desperation. Some Solid Old Fool was 
boring them to death with: relentless platitudes, and 
having tried eyery other means of making him hold his 
tongue, determined to flatter him into doing so, and 
so, said: *'A still tongue makes a wise head." The Old 
Fool caught at it as eagerly as a duck would at a June- 
bug, and from that remote day to this it has constituted 
a stock phrase in the Court Language of solid Old Fools 
everywhere. So firmly were they persuaded of its vir- 
tues that they took a mortgage upon thr first edition and 
foreclosed it as soon as possible. And to-day, to show 
how it has grown in popular favor, it is being retailed 
in every public school-house in tho United States, by 
every numb-skull of a teacher from Maine to Mexico. 

And the success of the thing has been wonderful. 
The Solid Old Fools have captured everything. Do you 
find a wit, a humorist, a writer or a poet, as president 
of a bank or a railroad ? Not one. The Solid Old 
Fools hare them all. And why should they not? The 
idea of wit and humor running a bank or a railroad is 
ridiculous. Every dog has his day, and the Solid Old 
Fool has his to-day. In the days of Swift and Addison, 
Pope and Steele and Goldsmith the wits had it all their 
own way. But that day is past. 

When a vote is about to be taken now-a-c'ays for a 
president, a man's brilliance is against him every time. 
Oh, how the brilliant man wishes he could swap places 
about that time with the Solid Old Fool, who knows 
just enough of the theory of our government to recog- 
nize the fact that he is eligible to the presidency. Look 
at these poor brilliant men. Clay, Webster, Calhoun and 
James G. Blaine, left at home to die of broken hearts as 
they beheld the Great American Ass — the voters, bear- 



27 

ing in triumph to Washington, men who never originat- 
ed a national sentiment, much less a national measure. 

Look at the field of literature. See the Solid Old 
Fool who never wrote a line in his life, owning the best 
magazines in the country, and making hundreds of 
thousands of dollars per year, only paying the poor devil 
of a genius enough to keep soul and body together. 

Look at your manufacturing enterprises headed by 
Solid Old Fools, who in some cases, hardly "have sense 
enough to carry food to a bear," while the brilliant 
mechanical genius who supervises thousands of spindles 
and wheels and pulleys, is happy to earn in a lifetime as 
much as the profits accruing to the Solid Old Fool, 
who owns it, amounts to in a single year. 

Look at the church. See the brilliant preacher — the 
idol of the people, criticised by every Solid Old Fool of 
a preacher in the Conference. Debarred from every of- 
ficial position of honor, trust or profit, because they say- 
"he is not a safe man." The Lord help these Old 
"Safes" in the church. The whole Jewish-Sanhedrim 
was composed of "safe men." They were too "safe" 
for Jesus, and to make themselves still safer they put 
him to death. They were too safe for the Apostles also, 
and would have treated them in the same way if possi. 
ble. 

To end this branch of the subject, it may as well be 
conceded first as last, that the "Solid Old Fool is on 
top, and we will now proceed to show how he got there. 

Any pursuit which requires no extraordinary powers 
of mind, is of course the one capable of being followed 
by the great majority of mankind. And when thi« pur- 
suit takes precedence of all others in point of honor and 
esteem, it follows as a matter of course that every other 
avocation or even profession must sink more or less in 



38 

public estimation. For instance, before the advent of 
the Money Age, the trades which men followed determ- 
ined their social status. The blacksmith was a little 
lower than the shoemaker, unless the latter was a cob- 
bler. The carpenter was one degree removed from the 
shoemaker, unless the former was what is known as a 
"jackleg." The machinist took precedence of the car- 
penter and the mason, while the merchant and the farm- 
er, when the latter came under the category of a planter, 
took precedence of all the rest. In the learned profes- 
sions it was much the same. The statesman took pre- 
cedence of the politician, the politician of the lawyer, 
the lawyer of the doctor, the doctor of the preacher, and 
the preacher of the pedagogue. 

Now, it mattered not how much money the black- 
smith made, he could not break down the social barriers 
until he quit the business of sl blacksmith. Until he 
took off his leather apron and quit prizing grit and peb- 
bles out of a mule's foot, and got the cinders out of his 
hair and the soot from his face and hands, he was not 
eligible to take a step higher in the social scale. Neither 
could the carpenter's son associate with the merchant's 
daughter until he had gotten the sawdust and shavings 
out of his hair and eye-brows. Neither could the ma- 
chinist until he had gotten rid of his grease and over- 
alls, pay court to the planter's daughter. 

In the learned professions a similar unwritten law 
was observed. The poor devil of a school-master stood 
no show with the banker's daughter. The preacher, 
when he could gain the hand of an heiress, was con- 
sidered as having in advance given assurance to the 
young lady's family that he would abandon his calling 
or so alter the manner of his discourses as to give no 
further offence to her rich friends. In those days the 



29 

M. D. bade defiauce to the quack with his bogus certifi- 
cates. The statesman eyed with lofty disdain the pot- 
house politician. 

But with the advent of the Money Age, all these social 
distinctions vanished. "The almighty dollar" has broken 
down the last barrier between the trades and professions. 
The soap-boiler and the statesman shake hands across 
the greasy chasm. The wealthy scavenger scarce deigns 
to notice the seedy litterateur as he passes him on the 
street. Were he rich, he would fairly devour him. To 
make a long matter short, the Solid Old Fool saw that 
his hour had come, and embraced it. He saw that any 
fool could make money, and that any fool who had it 
was considered a fool no longer. That genius and wit 
and talent would combine to sing his praises — and get 
his money. They would hang upon his every utterance 
as upon an oracle — for money. If what he said had no 
sense in it, they would put sense in it — for money. If 
he wished to go to Congress he could go — by money. 
Just look on the Solid Old FooFs sitting in the Senate 
of the United States, in seats once filled by Clay, Web- 
ster and Calhoun. Some of them have been sitting 
there for ten years, and if their mouths have ever opened 
except to yawn when some motion in the interest of the 
people was being made, we cannot recall it. Look at 
that brilliant man — a, survival of a past senatorial age — 
sitting over there. He is poor, and has about as much 
weight and influence in shaping legislation as a feather. 
Look at that squat-figured, low-browed, stolid specimen 
of humanity sitting over there fast asleep. He is worth 
millions, and so is his vote. 

Oh, ye little men with a pile of gray matter in your 
brain-boxes! It is no use to kick. You sold yourselves 
to the Devil, when for the sake of a few paltry dollars 



you puffed the Solid Old Fool in the newspaper — when 
you sang his praises in the magazine and thundered 
them on the hustings. It is no use to squirm. He has 
his heel upon you and will crush the life out of you. 
Oh, ye aristocrats! Growing small by degrees and 
beautifully less ! Turn up your noses no longer at com- 
mon folks, 'x'here are no common folks nowadays, but 
poor folks, and you must continue to do as you have 
done ever since the war — fall down at the feet of mam- 
mon and worship him, or become common folks your- 
selves. "A fig for family, but millions for fortune," 
henceforth be your motto. "Get into the swim." Throw 
yourselves prostrate in the dust before the image of the 
modern Nebucbadnezer, which is gold, gold, gold. Pro- 
pitiate the modern Croesus, invite him to your houses, 
throw your daughters into his arms. Let money cause 
to commingle your patrician with his plebeian blood, as 
you have dene, and prate no more of "quality." The 
salt has lost its savour, and the word its meaning. 

Hurrah, for the reign of the Solid Old Fool, 
When the dollar alone is the ultima Thule, 
When brains and high lineage are not worth a fig, 
When minus a fortune or bank-account big, 
No longer it pays my proud Cavalier 
To turn up your nose or utter a sneer, 
The Pleb. is on top, and the Solid Old Fool 
Is the cock of the walk — acknowledge his rule. 
Let Pleb. and Patrician unitedly sing. 
The praise of the Nineteenth Century King. 

We conclude the subject of "The Solid Old Fool" 
with one more observation. He has two redeeming 
qualities. The first is that he is frequently made such 
as he is by a mother's love. She has, say, four sons — 
John, Tom, Dick and Harry. John, Tom and Dick are 
as brilliant as may be. Harry is a dunce. John, Dick 



31 

and Tom leave him far in the rear at school. Mother 
tells the teacher, and all her neighbors, where little 
Harry can hear it : "Harry is not bright like John, 
Dick and Tom, but he is mighty solid." His "solidity" 
becomes the virtue of the family. Brilliance is at a 
discount. Grenius, for want of sympathy at home, seeks 
it abroad. It is thrown into bad company for want of 
good. The Solid Little Dunce at home is coddled and 
petted and given every opportunity for material ad- 
vancement. He assumes the air of a monarch when in 
the presence of his brethren. They leave home. He 
remains, and by virtue of every opportunity freely given 
him, becomes the richest boy in the whole family, while 
perhaps in far-away Texas or distant California the 
brilliant John, the ready Richard, or the Titanic Tom 
are burning midnight oil in an uncongenial age to keep 
body and soul together. Meanwhile Harry, with just 
sense enough to say his brothers are "smart," is at home, 
the idol of every other Solid Old Fool for miles arouud. 
Eligible to a seat in the Legislature, in Congress — eligi- 
ble to anything, except having sense enough to be edu- 
cated. 

The other redeeming quality of the Solid Old Fool is 
his power to produce sleep. When all other agencies 
fail, he succeeds. Your own brilliance upon him has 
about the same effect as pouring water upon a duck's 
back. You could no more impress one of your brilliant 
fancies upon his dull brain than you could raise the 
dead. You know this. You give him the floor, and in 
ten minutes you are so sound asleep yourself, that noth- 
ing short of a cannon would rouse you. Sancho Panza 
says, "God bless the man who first invented sleep. The 
Solid Old Fool is the man. 



32 
CHAPTER IV. 

THE ANCESTRAL OLD FOOL. 

Nearly everything in this world has its opposite. In 
fact nearly all our ideas are derived in this way. We 
must know Uuo things in order to comprehend one. If 
we had no knowledge of light we could have no concep- 
tion of darkness. Without such duality of ideas and 
objects it would be impossible to think correctly. It 
follows as a matter of course, then, that the Newly Rich 
Old Fool has his counterpart. He is seen in the An- 
cestral Old Fool. This dilapidated specimen of the hu- 
man race is as much of a nuisance in his way as the 
Newly Rich is in his. If the one bores you to death 
about his money, the other does the same about his an- 
cestors. Pride of ancestry is very commendable when 
one's ancestry is worthy of remembrance. But nine 
times in ten when you hear a man eternally talking 
about his ancestry, you at once infer they do not amount 
to much. When your ancestry is illustrious it always 
speaks for itself. The Ancestral Old Fool forgets that 
old people very geLerally have retentive memories of 
men and things of the long ago, and very often conclude 
when this specimen has blown his horn for all it is 
worth, that "a frog cannot remember when he was a 
tadpole, but other people do." As for ourselves, on such 
occasions we feel sorry for his ancestors (if he has any), 
and do not doubt, could they hear the glib tongues of 
some of their descendants, they would lament ever hav- 
ing sent such a specimen down to posterity to misrepre- 
sent them. These self-constituted spokesmen of illus- 
trious families are generally the most complete failures 
on earth. Their gardens are usually chock-full of 
weeds, their farms "gone to wreck," their houses (if they 



33 



have any) look like a cyclone of poverty has struck 
them, the windows crammed with old rags, and even 
the dogs, for want of food, are almost too lean to bark 
at you. The Old Fool is out at the elbows himself, 
with patches on the seat of his pants large enough to 
cover the whole map of the United States. And yet it 
is very often the case that he is offered employment that 
would support himself and family, and yet refuses it, 
preferring to sponge upon his neighbors, and pay them 
back with a dish of chat about his ancestors, who, like 
himself, were aristocrats, of course. Poor Old Fool! 
to delude him&elf with the idea that we have any aris- 
tocracy in this country, except the aristocracy of praise- 
worthy achievement — the aristocracy of virtue and tal- 
ent. Talk about such a thing in a country where no 
titles are allowable in times of peace, except the uni- 
versal "Colonel," and the ubiqnitons judge. Talk about 
an aristocracy where butchers, shoemakers and scaven- 
gers are as good as anyone else, when rich. 

The old t3lockhead is over one hundred years behind 
the times. The last vestige of aristocracy was utterly 
wiped out in this country by statute in the year 1777. 
The Old Fool knows no difference, however, between 
nobility and aristocracy. God creates the first and man 
the latter, and so imperfect is the work of the latter, 
that he must give it a title before any one would be able 
to decide by outward signs whether it was "fish, flesh, 
fowl or good red-herring. Owners of swine have certain 
marks, such as slits, holes, forks and crops in the ear, 
in order to distinguish their own from other people's 
hogs. But so far as we are acquainted, the aristocracy 
so-called of this country have no distinguishing marks 
about them, except, perhaps, "the big-head," super- 



M 

induced by an abundance of water in that member where 
their brains ought to be. 

But the Ancestral Old Fool is unmindful of all these 
things. It is a thousand pities such people as he have 
any ancestors. And we have no doubt their ancestors 
would regret, if they could, that they ever had any de- 
scendants, if they all turn oat like this one. 

But there is one consolation, if not compensation, 
left us. If we cannot have a titled aristocracy like 
England, nearly every American can have a Normandy 
poplar, a weeping willow, and a peacock, and that is all 
that is necessary to make an American aristocrat. 

Poor Old Fool! Three-fourths dunce and one-fourth 
fraud, we bid you adieu, and "bring in another" — ass. 



CHAPTER V. 

THE FOREIGK-TRAVELLED OLD FOOL. 

During the better days of the Republic, when Grod 
was above gold, mind above matter and manhood above 
money, it was the custom of Northern and Southern 
gentlemen, when they retired from politics or business, 
to visit foreign countries in order to better understand 
the workings of our own system of government, and im- 
prove their minds by visual contact with historic scenes. 
Some of our best American literature resulted from such 
visits. But since the advent of the Money Eia this is 
all changed. Thousands of men and women not know- 
ing B from a bull's foot crowd .the piazzas of every con- 
tinental hotel, where their swaggering, "pursified" de- 
meanor has brought contempt upon the whole of North 
America. They spend their money in the most lavish 
manner, and impress the economical denizens of the Old 
World as being the biggest set of fools in existence. 
They give swell entertainments, to which some old 
broken-down roue of a count, who has been tabooed by 
all decent society in his own country, is invited. Here 
this dilapidated specimen of decayed royalty is intro- 
duced to the American millionaire flunky's daughter, 
and ere long the whole kingdom of female fools in the 
United States is thrilled by the announcement of the 
engagement of the wealthy heiress of Porkopolis or 
Ootham to this needy matrimonial adventurer. There 
is but one redeeming feature in the whole disgraceful 
business, and that is its candor. There is no pretence 
of love on either side. The sordid daughter of the Re- 
public went over to buy a title, the old roue had one to 
sell, and the bargain was soon struck. The young 
woman was conscious, no doubt, that her only road to 



36 

nobility was to buy a title, and her husband, who Uad 
been trying to sell it for the past twenty years to every 
eligible young lady in Europe, thanks his stars, no 
doubt, that the Giueat WepuMic has come to his rescue 
in the shape of a big enough fool to buy it, and thereby 
save him a trip to Australia to avoid his creditors. 

But if the Foreign-Travelled Old Fool is a standing 
rebuke to us in Europe for his want of taste, his ill- 
manners, and the lavish display of his wealth, his ig- 
norance, is laughable. He visits Stratford-on-Avon, 
perhaps, and by consulting his guide-books, learns that 
this was the birthplace of Shakespeare. But who in 
thunder was Shakespeare ? is what troubles him. It is 
true that when he was a soap-boiler in Cincinnati, a 
butcher in Chicago, or a saddler in New York, he may 
have heard that Shakespeare was a great dramatic genius. 
But what in the name of Old Nick is a dramatic genius? 
There is the rub. So.i.etimes the Old Fool will pur- 
chase an old castle and take up his winter residence in 
it. But he has no more idea of its history than a hog 
has about holiday. 

As a proof of this, it is related of an American mil- 
lionaire who bought a castle on the Rhine, that one cold 
day his daughter found him w^arming his hands at a fire 
which he had kindled in a suit of plate armor. "Oh, 
papa, what have you been doing?" she cried. "The fel- 
ler that patented that stove," replied the lord of the cas- 
tle, "must have been crazy, but I've got the old thing 
heated up at last." 

But if you wish to see the Foreign-Travelled Old Fool 
in all his glory, just wait until he gets back once more 
upon his native heath. With what gusto [goose-toe] he 
relates how he was introduced to my Lord Broken- 
staff and her ladyship; of how his daughters, Polly and 



37 



Betsy Ann, were waited upon by gentlemen of titles, as 
if they had been queen's daughters ; of how the aristo- 
cratic world of London society thronged his drawing- 
rooms, when his other daughter, Belinda, married the 
renowned Count Stickinthemud. And then to hear him 
-descant on the splendid society to be found only in Eu- 
rope, where dukes, earls, barons, counts and lords are as 
plentiful as colonels and judges in Old Virginia. 

Poor Old Fool. If he had any eense about him he 
would know that to be a cultivated, patriotic American 
citizen is a greater honor than nine-tenths of the titles 
in Europe. As if he did not know that swell society of 
aristocrats in London is one mass of corruption and con- 
ceit from head to foot, a social ulcer, drawing the life 
out of the honest workmen of Great Britain, Scotland 
and Ireland to maintain its pretensions. To that select 
circle of statesmen who guide the destinies of Europe ; 
to the pure men and pure women who constitute the best 
society in the Old World, the Old Fool was never ad- 
mitted. Snobbing and sychophancy, gold lace and tin- 
sel, spurious lords and bastard counts the Old Fool has 
mistaken for royalty. There is not a decent man in 
America who would not kick the whole lot out of his 
house should he find them in it. 

But the Foreign-Travelled Old Fool knows it all now, 
and no doubt when he reads this, will simply say, "Poor 
fellow ! "He ought to travel as I have done, and then he 
would know better." Our inability to comply with his 
advice is mitigated by one reflection, and that is seeing 
that every average American who sjoes to Europe comes 
back a greater fool than he was before he went. We do 
not care to take the risk. 

But as every kind of a fool, as we have repeatedly ob- 



38 

served, has his opposite, our next chapter will treat of 
the one opposed to the Foreign-Travelled specimen. 

CHAPTER VI. 

THE UNTRAVELLED OLD FOOL. 

Variety iu unity and unity in variety constitutes the 
chief and greatest charm in nature. While no one will 
mistake a tree for a flower or a plant for a poplar, yet all 
of them put together furnish one pleasing picture. Sa 
it is with the Same Old Fool. No matter what his 
name may be, he will be found belonging to the uni- 
versal family. For instance, the Un travelled Old Fool 
thinks he knows it all, although he has never been over 
fifty miles from home in his whole life. As the religi- 
ous bigot never gets beyond the little circle of his own 
creed, and esteems every one else who does as little short 
of a heathen or a heietic, so the Untravelled Old Fool 
has the utmost contempt for "furrin parts." He be- 
lieves that where the tree-tops intercept the horizon is- 
the end of the world, and hence anything pretending 
to come from beyond that is an invader of his territory. 

He has also the most inveterate prejudices against- 
any one leaving his own section to seek his fortune else- 
where. To prevent this he has invented a most plausi- 
ble maxim, which is that "a rolling stone gathers no- 
moss." Well, he ought to be an authority on the subject 
of moss, as he generally stays in one place so long that 
he becomes moss-covered himself. Common sense, how- 
ever, would seem to suggest that the stone should never 
cease to roll until it struck a mossy place. Besides thaty 
all useful stones never have any moss on them, so that 
its presence on stones is like a kink in a pig's tail — 
more for ornament than use. 



39 

That the foregoing is true will appear from the fol- 
lowing incident as related by Daniel Webster himself: 
As is well known, the god-like Daniel first saw the 
light amid the barren hills of N^w Hampshire. As 
soon as he was old enough to know better, he left the 
State. Years afterwards, when a Senator in Congress 
from Massachusetts, and when his fame was at its 
zenith, he concluded to astonish the natives by a visit to 
his old neighborhood. In order to make their amaze- 
ment greater, he did not give his real name, but con- 
cluded he would find out what they thought of him first. 
Approaching an old man — one of those Untravelled Old 
Fools to be found everywhere — and one whom he knew, 
he asked him if a family by the name of Webster did 
not once live near him. '*0h, yes," replied the old man. 
"Well," says Daniel, "can you tell me what went with 
the boys ?" "Yes," says he, "Zekiel turned out mon- 
strous well. He stayed to 'hum' and married and was 
respected by everybody." "But what about the other 
children ? Did he have another son ?" "Oh, yes," re- 
plied the old man. "He had another trifling son by the 
name of Daniel. He got a notion to travel, and as he 
has never been hearn of since, it's mor 'n likely he went 
out West and was hung for horse-stealing." After such 
a colloquy it is needless to add that Daniel did not make 
himself known. 

That the Untravelled Old Fool is as full of conceit 
and prejudice as a weed is of sap in the spring goes 
without saying. The mind, like tte body, grows by 
what it feeds upon, and as this Old Fool has never fed 
his mind on anything except bis own conceit, of 
course it partakes of the nature of the diet on which it 
is nourished. 

The Untravelled Old Fool is utterly oblivious of the 



40 

fact that contact with strangers, inspection of customs 
foreign to our own, and intercourse with the great 
world, has a tendency to alleviate local prejudices, lib- 
eralize the mind, and give us greater toleration for the 
shortcomings of our own neighbors. 

But the Untravelled Old Fool does not believe in the 
brotherhood of man, and only partially in the father- 
hood of God, that august paternity not embracing any 
one outside of his own community. 

But when the Untravelled Old Fool, as is sometimes 
the case, is forced by stress of ciscumstances to leave 
home, when he returns you may expect a marvellous 
narration of strange adventures. For instance, during 
the late war one of them, an old colored man, was taken 
by General Sheridan and carried to City Point. After 
an imprisonment of about two months he was set at 
liberty, and he at once returned home. Of course he 
had a miraculous yarn to tell, and it was soon told. 
In response to the query of his mistress as to where he 
had been, he replied: "Miss Nervry, Ise been every- 
whar. Ise been to City Pint, and I seed men dar from 
all parts. Why, Miss Nervry, dar was men dar from 
Spain and Specie too. And would you believe it, I saw 
great big black niggers sitting down dar luroting to ther 
parrimts jes as natchul as life." 

As a matter of course, the Untravelled Old Fool never 
wants his wife to put her foot out of the yard. He is a 
great believer in woman's rights, being fully persuaded 
she has a perfect right to cook, wash, scrub the floor, 
and when he is short of a hand, to hoe her own row 
in the corn-field. Is it not a little singular that every 
Old Fool has such a poor opinion of woman. 

Leaving the reader with this intricate conundrum, we 
will now proceed to the next chapter. 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE WORLDLY-WISE OLD FOOL. 

Because the Scriptures say that the children of this 
world are wiser in their day and generation than the 
children Light, some people labor under the mistaken 
impression that Grod commends the wisdom of this 
world, notwithstanding that the Word of God is not 
at all complimentary to mundane sapiency in a half 
dozen plain passages. The Worldly- Wise Old Fool still 
thinks he possesses a monopoly of all the knowledge 
worth having, and that all beyond this horizon of his is 
the region of pure fools. With him the god-like imagi- 
nation of a Milton which endows the creation of his 
fancy with life, beauty and sublimity, the sweep of 
whose seraphic wings embraces heaven, earth and hell, 
is unadulterated nonsense. Whether calves should be 
salted before they are weaned, or potatoes planted on the 
dark of the moon, possesses far more fascination for the 
Worldly- Wise Old Fool than all the creations of human 
genius, however great or noble they may be, however 
much they may exalt, refine and purify the human 
heart 

The Worldly- Wise Old Fool is always short-sighted. 
In politics his motto is "Expediency," and he rolls the 
"phrase," "practical politics" as a sweet morsel under 
his tongue. His idea of a statesman, who originates and 
formulates policies and measures not only for his own, 
but for future generations is that he is a confirmed 
crank. In the church it is the same way. He is so 
carried away by his zeal for numbers, and wealthy mem- 
bers in particular as additions to the sect to which he 
belongs, that he does not care a bawbee whether they 
are converted or not. If he is a member of a committee 



42 

to call a new pastor he always favors one who can 
"draw," even though he use the enticing words of man's 
wisdom to do so instead of relying upon the power of the 
Holy Ghost. 

But if you would hear wisdom fall from his lips sure 
enough, get him started on the subject of matrimony. 
He does not believe in love and to hear him tell it, he 
never knew a so-called love match to turn out well. 
To hear him talk one would imagine the sole object of 
matrimony is to make money. He talks of jointures 
and contracts as much as a lawyer would in a court room. 
With him the noblest pursuit under heaven is that of 
gain. Should he attempt to edit a newspaper, instead of 
trying to improve the morals of the people he devotes 
the whole of his editorial space advocating "booms" of 
any description from a bucket factory to a railroad as if 
the road to heaven was along the line of railway. 

But a day is coming in which the Worldly- Wise Old 
Foci is to be pitied. It is the day of his death. Hav- 
ing spent his whole life scheming, contriving and plan- 
ning, having all his life been too busy to prepare for 
death, he is compelled at last to face the grim monster. 
Of what avail is all his worldly wisdom then? Ashe 
hears in his dying moments a voice saying: "Friend, how 
comest thou in hither not having on a wedding garment," 
what comfort will it afford him to reflect upon his' 
funeral, his senseless body attended by men of wealth, 
honor and prominence to its last resting place when he 
knows his soul is in hell ? What consolation will then 
be afforded the Worldly-Wise Old Fool as he reflects 
that in yonder world he was a complete success, that- 
his bank account was fat, that his credit was A No. 1, 
that all the rest of the Worldly-Wise Old Fools regard- 
ed him as a king bee, that others praised his worldly 



43 

wisdom and sagacity ? What consolation will all this 
afford him in hell ? Realizing that he was not wise unto 
salvation but a fool, with what remorse of conscience 
must he recall his treatment of men of whom the world 
was not worthy; men who in order to gain Heaven coun- 
ted all earthly gain but loss, who looked upon his mil- 
lions as so many millstones which the Devil hung 
around his neck to drown him in perdition. How the 
Worldly-Wise Old Fool laughed at such godly people 
calling them cranks, visionaries and enthusiasts, while 
he lay the flattering unction to his own soul that he was 
all he should be and a little more besides. Poor fool ! 
**What shall it profit a man to gain the whole world and 
lose his own soul." 

CHAPTER Vm. 

THE MONEY-LOVING OLD FOOL. 

Every civilized nation has not only a system of 
weights and measures but also a standard of value. And 
this is not only true of civilized, but even barbarous 
people have some accepted standard of measurement and 
valuation. Among the North American Indians what 
school boy has not read of "wampum," among the 
Arabs of fine horses, and so of all. But as a nation is 
only a collection of families living under one govern- 
ment, the rule holds good with these also. All families 
have their standards of value. Some have theirs in 
"blood," some in distinctions, while the vast majority 
place theirs in money. And as a family is only a collec- 
tion of individuals living under the same roof or at 
least sharing a common parentage, the rule also holds 
equally good with the individuals composing them. 
One child perhaps makes pleasure its standard of value, 



44 

and can see nothing valuable beyond that. Another 
makes "business" his, and contemns everything else, 
while the third makes money his and will not stop until 
at last he cannot see anything worth having beyond it. 
In fact the Money Loving Old Fool in trying to reduce 
the world to the dimensions of a dollar, so contracts and 
dries up his own nature that the Devil himself would 
not give iiine pence a quart for such men to kindle his 
fires with. Any lover of his species who will calmly 
survey this subject will see that two-thirds of the 
miseries of the human family flow from this source. 
Whence come all these law suits in our courts but from 
Money-Loving Old Fools trying to grab what does not 
belong to them ? Why all these divorce suits but from 
money-loving young fools, who in order to get money 
have cast themselves away upon some old doting, decripit 
dizzard, half dead with rheumatism or gout, with per- 
haps but one eye, and that always full of white wax, no 
hair on the outside of his head and no brains on the in- 
side. Although provided with all the means to matri- 
mony by Nature itself, yet in the absence of money these 
are not considered means at all. These things are less 
frequtnt among the poor than those who pretend to be 
some body. 

It very frequently happens thai one of these Money- 
Loving Old Fools is what is known as a Fortune Hun- 
ter, and when such is the case, no heiress in the whole 
country where he lives need despair, for though she 
be an old crone without a natural tooth in her mouth, 
her whole neck a mass of strings, her head in the ab- 
sence of a wig as innocent of hair as a new-born babe's, 
yet this Fortune Hunting Old Fool whose stomach is 
dead to everything' else but money will marry her if he 
can. Sometimes this Fortune Hunting Old Fool, which 



45 

is only one branch of the Money-Loving Old Fool, al- 
though as poor as a church mouse, utterly destitute of 
talent and as ugly as sin, has the "cheek" to lay siege 
to the richest and prettiest young woman in the whole 
neighborhood. As it is already out of the question for 
such fellows to pretend love, what inducemens they can 
possibly offer the young lady is a mystery. Unless she 
thinks, perhaps, she may outlive him and can then erect 
a monument of brass to his memory, we are at a loss to 
know for what purpose she consents to marry such as he. 

Sometimes the Money-Loving Old Fool is found in 
the pulpit. When such is the case, if his salary be 
small, he is under the impression all the time that he 
mistook his calling. But if on the other hand, he is 
already making twice as much as far abler men can in 
secular professions, and the stewards conclude to give 
him a thousand more, he soars to the Seventh Heaven in 
an in instant. But such instances are rare. As a gen- 
eral rule there are so many Money-Loving Old Fools on 
the Board of Stewards that they will hardly allow him 
to pray for an increase much less shout over its accep- 
tance as they keep him so busy scratching around to 
make "buckle and tongue meet" that he has no time to 
do so. 

But of all the Money-Loving Old Fools in the uni- 
verse there is none meaner than that parent, man or 
woman, who will deliberately murder all the happiness 
of his own children in order to obtain it. There are 
men in society, yes women in society, who pass for gen- 
tlemen and ladies, who sell their daughters as truly as a 
Oircassion does his to the Sultan of Turkey. Collegi- 
ate, musical education, lessons in art, everything that 
has a tendency to liberalize the mind, enabling it to 
sodr above and beyond the sordid things of sense, and 



46 

time they freely bestow. But when it comes to that 
step in life, around which concentres all her future 
happiness or woe, she is allowed no voice, and if she re- 
fuses to barter her bliss for a mess of filthy lucre she 
is disinherited. Yes, there are men and women whose 
names are on the church registers who do this and yet 
when they die expect to go to Heaven. Of all the fools 
they are they are the most illustrious. When people be- 
come as mean as this, dying (except physically,) is out 
of the question. They are dead already. 

But perhaps some Money-Loving Old Fool will con- 
clude that the reasons for this chapter on his tribe is 
owing to the fact that the "grapes are sour." Allow 
us then here to state, Oh, Money-Making Old Fool, that 
while we recognize the necessity of having money, we 
are yet strangers to the passion of loving it. We would 
as soon grieve over our old suit of clothes, which has 
done us good service, and which we lay aside for a new 
one, as we would over money spent in a good cause. We 
have many sins to answer for, but the one of loving 
money can never be laid to our charge. We have en- 
vied Demosthenes arraigning Philip of Macedon, Cicero 
accusing Cataline and Edmund Burke persecuting War- 
ren Hastings, but so help me God, all the wealth of 
Croesus, the bonds of a Vanderbilt, and the stocks of a 
Gould have never created within our bosoms even a 
passing emotion of envy. 



47 
CHAPTER IX. 

THE PUNCTILIOUS OLD FOOL. 

Sturdy if Eot surly, Samuel Johnson could not bear 
the sight of a young woman weeping over the demise of 
a pet canary or lapdog. A man who in the earlier stages 
of his career shivered in the day time in a London gar- 
ret and prowled about in the night time poking into 
ash-heaps in search of bread crusts and potato parings 
in order to keep soul and body together, might not be 
expected to give vent to lamentations at the loss of tri- 
fles. Indeed, seeing that lapdogs, and canaries especial- 
ly, had fared much better than himself during the short 
time of their natural lives, he may have viewed their de- 
parture with complacency, if not satisfaction. Indeed 
a man who has really suffered intensely, while he may 
be kind to the dumb brutes, never makes pets of them, 
unless his sufferings have made him a misanthrope, and 
even then he does so, not because he loves the animal 
but hates man. 

Then again, the same Samuel Johnson, who was a 
close observer of the moral law, paid but little deference 
to minor morals, such as correct table etiquette, the 
limitations of conges, bows and nods, whether the hair 
should be parted in the middle or along the side, and 
many other mooted and tremenduous problems which 
have agitated light heads and polite society ever since 
society began. 

Of course, then, seeing that so many people are occu- 
pied with the study of good manners in society, devoting 
their whole lives to find out all the proper capers, it is 
but natural that the Punctilious Old Fool should come 
forth fully armed as Minerva from the brain of Jove to 
set all things right- He ofcourse has all the ear-marks 



48 

of his tribe. He hnoius it all. He has long since es- 
tablished the point that good manners are better than 
good morals. That, although some graceless rascal, 
whose insinuating address, fascinating manner and 
fashionable finery has proven the ruin of some innocent 
and unsuspecting maiden, still he is such a nice gentle- 
man that society cannot dispense with him. Such little 
gaucheries as these are of no importance, but should be 
in a moment of abstraction, or absent-mindedness, in- 
advertently convey his food to his mouth on the point 
of his knife, he commits thereby one of the unpardona- 
ble sins against society and may henceforth consider 
himself as a heathen man and publican and an alien to 
the commonwealth of etiquette. 

Again, when the Fashionable Old Fool has instituted 
some new craze in dress, the Punctilious Old Fool is the 
first to don it and gauges society by the number who 
follow suit. And at this present time woe be to the 
luckless wight, ambitious of social honors, who fails to 
appear in "yaller" alligator shoes and a silk belly-band. 
He might as well throw up the sponge at once and ac- 
knov/ledge himself whipped, for the social referee — the 
Punctilious Old Fool — will not even allow him the 
empty honor of calling it a "draw." 

In all matters pertaining to that grade of society in 
which the Punctilious Old Fool is found, he is a com- 
plete success, although a failure everywhere else. The 
reasons for such success are easily found. It does not 
require brains but nerve to be a leader in society, and 
he or she who has nerve enough to be the first who shall 
adopt some absurd or even immodest style of dress is, of 
course, the leader, and as the greatest fool goes first all 
the other fools follow, and when the last fool enters the 
social stockyard, the gate is shut and all that poor out- 



49 

siders can do is to climb the fence and look at the me- 
nagerie that way. 

But in many departments of life, requiring brains 
and energy and courage, the Punctilious Old Fool is a 
complete failure. In war he is a martinet. Old Wurm- 
ser, when beaten by Xapoleon in Italy, complained that 
the latter violated all the rules of war in order to do so. 
The Virginia Buckskin won all the honors as the Punc- 
tilious British general lost them at Braddock's defeat. 
The Punctilious Old Fool of a politician has his scruples 
about the passage of a bill, which nine-tenths of the 
people demand, and is laid on the shelf on account of 
his scruples. The Punctilious Old Fool of honor has 
caused the death of brave men by insisting upon some 
trifling point, whose lives were worth more to the world 
than all the lives of all the Punctilious Old Fools who 
ever lived since the world began. 

In literature the Punctilious Old Fools is so precise 
that he will leave nothing to be imagined, and hence 
would destroy all the charm of poetry, the magic of 
eloquence and the delight of history. At the dinner 
table he is such a terror that the meal is eaten by his 
family in fear and trembling and by his guests (if he 
have any) with heaviness of heart. In short he is a 
nuisance of the worst possible description. We will 
leave him for the present but will return to him again 
later on. 



CHAPTER X. 



THE OPTIMISTIC OLD FOOL. 



Of course, as might have been expected, seeing the 
condition of society, the Same Old Fool would be on 
hand to either mend it or mar it, according to his own 
peculiar notions. Now, it is manifest to every right- 
minded person that society, or humanity rather, is far 
from an ideal state of happiness, and a great many very 
wise persons are under the impression that the case will 
never be otherwise while human nature continues the 
same. There are others, however, of a different opinion, 
and among them is the Optimistic Old Fool. The first 
account we have of this species of the universal gemcs is 
in the Old Testament. There he appeared before kings 
and prince^, as a prophet, and it was his characteristic 
then as to-day, to prophesy good things altogether, 
which of course proved the reverse. There were some 
mitigating circumstances, however, connected with this 
ancient humbug, which his modern cousin escapes. The 
old one very often paid the forfeit of his life for lying, 
whereas, in modern times, owing to freedom of speech, 
which is tantamount to liberty of lying, he may prog- 
nosticate good tidings the livelong day, and the only 
loss of life for so doing will be your own, if you cannot 
make your escape from him. 

But the Optimistic Old Fool, as a talker, is not a cir- 
cumstance compared to what he is as an author. There 
he comes forth like Minerva from the brain of Jupiter, 
fully armed with theories for the extirpation of evil, 
and the consequent advent of the millenium. Not one 
of the whole tribe, as far as I have read, believes in the 
efficacy of revelation to effect this, but nearly all of them 



51 

believe in the perfectibility of human nature unassisted 
by the gospel of Jesus Christ. 

Plato first set the ball in motion over 2,000 years ago 
by the publication of his Ideal Republic, and from that 
day to this there has regularly appeared a successor in 
the same line. Sir Thomas Moore, with his Utopia, the 
Grand Model of John Locke, and last, but not least. 
Looking Backward, by Edward Bellamy. The means of 
attaining the result were different, but the end was the 
same. But "Looking Backward" is only the culmination 
of the Puritanic idea of his own section, and from which 
it seems impossible to divert the New England intellect. 
The Oromwellian idea of remedying one evil by the com- 
mission of a thousand others, before which the original 
one complained of, sinks into utter insignificance, still 
dominates the descendants of Plymouth Pock. A State 
decree for the elimination of any evil, great or small, is 
their dominant idea. The paternal idea of government, 
as outlined in Bellamy's book, need not wait until the 
year 2000 in order to witness its workings. The history 
of the past forty years has fully proven its absurdity. 
It was taught by the earlier abolitionists that slavery 
was the sum of all villainies, and when that was re- 
moved, the North and South would live like brothers. 
It was removed, and they live less like brothers than 
they did before. Mr. Bellamy's section has dictated the 
legislation of the Uniied States ever since the war. Be- 
hold the result. Seciionalism and anarchism are lam- 
pant. Forces unheard of in America before threaten 
the life of the government. The industrial revolution 
of Bellamy would excite as much violent opposition as 
the autocracy of Reed. 

No, Mr. Bellamy, the evils of society do not spring 
from political and social institutions, but from a corrupt 



52 

heart. And as soon as you and Joseph Cook, who pre- 
tends to criticise your book, and Eobert G. Ingersoll, 
who approves it, realize that fact, the better for you all. 
Oh, no. All your inventions for multiplying creature 
comforts do not better human nature at all; if anything^ 
they make men worse by the increase of idleness, for an 
idle man's brain will be as much the Devil's work-shop 
in the year 2000 as it is to-day. The grace of God alone 
in any human heart could make "Looking Backward" 
possible in the year you name or at any other time. 

But perhaps some Optimistic Old Fool will say, 
^'Surely this is a better age than the one preceding." 
Certainly. But why so ? Is it because we have tele- 
graph, railways, telephones, electric lights, and the 
thousand and one methods of alleviating physical dis- 
comforts? Do these things change human nature and 
make it better? If so, railway men, telegraph operators 
and telephone men should be angels. Are they? If 
the railway affects the moral nature of man, what is the 
meaning of a Sunday train? On, no. That hypothesis 
will not answer. "Well, but," says the Optimistic Old 
Fool, "you cannot deny that there is no such thing as 
persecution for opinion's sake, no burning at the stake 
and no inquisition." Certainly this is so; and to what 
are we indebted for all this ? To material progress ? 
Certainly not. What then ? To the fact of the better 
understanding of the Word of God ; to the prevalence 
of Christian principles and bettes laws in consequence 
of such knowledge. This is the whole and only expla- 
nation, not that human nature of itself has undergone 
any change. Men who do not acknowledge Christ, 
curse, violate the Sabbath, commit adultery, theft and 
murder as they always did, in spite of all the Optimistic 
Qld Fools in existence, and will continue to do so until 



53 

the end of time, under the same conditions. 

But if ever, at any time, the whole world should em- 
brace Christianity and live up to its teachings, which 
will never be, then indeed such books as "Looking 
Backward" would come within the realm of possibilities. 

But as long as human nature continues the same, all 
the creature comforts and appliances that could be piled 
up to Heaven, all the State enactments that could be 
written from now until doom's day will never affect it. 

But with all his faults, which chiefly concern his 
head, and not his heart, we much prefer the Optimistic 
Old Fool to the one which is the subject of the next 
chapter. 

CHAPTER XI. 

THE PESSIMISTIC OLD FOOL. 

The connection between a torpid liver and sour god- 
liness like that between mind and matter is one of the 
unsolved problems of physical science. That they are 
united and that closely, does not admit of a doubt. In 
fact the serious aspect of true piety bears such a striking 
resemblance to its counterfeit pre&entment — sour godli- 
ness — that it would puzzle the wis* st and most observ- 
ant physiognomist to detect the difference in facial ex- 
pression that characterizes each. The only way is this, 
that whereas the truly pious man mourns over his own 
depravity, tte sour godly man, while confident of his 
own uprightness, laments the wickedness of others. 
And the same rule will apply to all torpid livers whether 
in the church or out of it. Those bilious old cranks 
would feel insulted if you mildly suggested at the close 
of one of their outbursts against the degeneracy of 
modern times that a few bottles of Simmon's Liver 



54 

Kegulator would improve the aspect of things, and 
would at once set you down as a heathen man and a 
publican of the deepest dye. Some good-natured men, 
however, say you should make allowance for a man with 
a disordered liver. Inasmuch as drug stores and physi- 
cians abound, and as the latter especially pride them- 
selves on their ability to cure all disorders of the liver, 
they are without excuse in our humble opinion. Just 
to think that a small doctor's bill would save mankind 
from such a terrible infiction as one of these Pessimis- 
tic Old Fools and that he will not incur it, contending 
all the time that his soul is spotless; that the wicked- 
ness of other men causes him to inveigh as he does. It 
is too bad. We almost feel like going back to the 
"good old days" that he is so fond of talking about, 
when it would have been allowable to have bled him to 
death without judge or jury. 

The Pessimistic Old Fool generally selects a rainy 
day to call upon you. The gloom without, the lowering 
clouds, all Nature in mourning as it were, is just suited 
to his genius. The down-pour of rain prevents your es- 
cape. He has you in his grip. If you broach the sub- 
ject of the weather you might as well set back and pre- 
pare for the infliction that is to follow for he never stops 
short of the prediction of a great flood which will de- 
stroy all the lowland crops and wash all the bridges 
away, but continues to inveigh again&t the climate of his 
own country until a stranger, if present, would imagine 
he was in Patagonia instead of being in one of the most 
highly favored countries on earth. 

Having at last exhausted the weather, which consti- 
tutes his opening lemarks, as the reporter would say, he 
is now ready for business, and before he leaves, which is 
generally late in the evening, he has damned everything 



55 

m existence except himself, more worthy nine times out 
of ten than any thing he has touched upon during the 
whole day. During the delivery of this infliction per- 
haps the laughter of fun-loving children may be heard 
in the next room and the music of their happy voices 
makes you feel as if you were in perdition itself by con- 
trast. 

If one of these Pessimistic Old Fools could only be 
relegated to ''the good old times" of which he is so 
enamoured and be threatened with the stake for expres- 
sing his opinions so freely, and then brought back to 
the present and have his liver thoroughly regulated, per- 
haps his ideas would flow in another channel. Or, if he 
were compelled to ride in the dead of winter from Rich- 
mond to New York in a stick gig through snow and 
wind, and could exchange it as he can now for a Pull- 
man Palace Oar, provided with every comfort, perhaps 
he might thank his stars that he lived in the nineteenth 
century. I say, perhaps, for there are some such incor- 
rigible old fools that nothing but hard times and sorrow- 
ful subjects give them any delight in conversation. 

But enough of the Pessimistic Old Fool. His very 
idea diies up all the sources of inspiration, and we leave 
him where he always will be — bringing np the rear — 
cursing his luck, not that he cannot keep up with the 
procession, but that he is even compelled to follow it. 



CHAPTER XII. 

THE SELF-MADE MAN^ OF AN OLD FOOL. 

In a former chapter of this veracious chrouicle, we 
took occasion, in describing the Newly-Rich Old Fool, 
to say that he always lays especial emphasis on the fact 
that he is "a self-made man." This, of course, has ref- 
erence to himself and not his money, to hear him tell it. 
But any man with three grains of sense in his cranium 
perceives in a two-minutes' conversation with the old 
goose, that but for his money he could never rightfully 
claim an} thing except that he was a ninny, and we do 
not believe that even a defeated politician would deny 
this claim to be fully borne out by the returns. 

But every man has his audience, and the Self-Made 
Man of an Old Fool has his. As every claim in the 
world, however absurd, has some one to put it forth, so 
in like manner he will always find some other Old Fool 
to allow this as genuine. Even down to the youngest 
juvenile going this is so. Let one of these 

Precious youths from Heaven sent, 
Perpetual motion to invent, 
Or make another president, 

but tell one of his marvellous yarns as to the great num- 
ber of big dogs his little bob-tailed fice has whipped, 
aud another in the person of little Tom, Dick, or Harry 
will confirm it in every particular, even down to making 
out that he '-seed it hisself." Just so when the Self- 
Made Old Fool claims that unaided he has done this, 
that or th@ other great thing, there is always another 
Old Fool ready to confirm every word of it. It is the 
natural tendency of human nature to exaggerate, and to 



57 

claim everything after the fact. Take the case of a 
genius, for instance. At the first exhibition of his pow- 
ers every common-sense Old Fool in his neighborhood 
will whisper it around the fireside that the boy has either 
gone daft, or will turn out bad. But when he succeeds 
— becomes famous and wins the applause of a wondering 
world, how proud they are to let tbe public know that 
they wpre the very first to detect his genius. They did 
nothing of the kind. They opposed him — nay, worse, 
they poured contumely upon him, they laughed at him. 

The child of genius, when unknown, 
In asking bread receives a stone, 
And yet the world in fame complete 
Will pour its honors at his feet. 

Now the Self-Made Old Fool never thinks of this, and 
hence believes all that his flatterers tell him. In conse- 
quence his vanity becomes so abnormal that he tells every 
person whom he meets that he is a self-made man. We 
have in our day and time met thousands of just such 
Old Fools, and we always have wondered that not one 
had modesty enough to at least keep his mouth shut, 
for any man with ordinary powers of observation can 
spot a Self-Made Man of an Old Fool without his saying 
a solitary word. There is a self-importance and suffi- 
ciency about them that points them out as Self-Made 
Old Fools as unerringly as the needle points to the pole. 

We were puzzled until we read Rabelais, to know upon 
what diet the Self-Made Old Fool subsisted. That im- 
mense genius gratified our curiosity by a description of 
a certain island whose inhabitants lived upon the ivind. 
A stranger passing through this wonderful island, and 
being an hungered, went to an inn to get his dinner. 
To his surprise there was not a dish to be seen upon the 



58 

table, and yet it was surrounded with guests. Pretty 
soon one of them gave his order, which was to the fol- 
lowing effect: "Waiter, bring me some northeast," upon 
which the servant pulled a string attached to a fan on 
the northeast corner of the table, the guest inserted a 
funnel in his mouth, and was pumped full of his airy 
dish. Others called for southeast, northwest, and in 
fact every point of the compass was utilized according 
to the appetite of each quest. 

The Self-Made Old Fool lives in the same way. It is 
true he generally has a plenty of victuals to eat, but he 
lives, you understand, upon the wind of flattery, and 
that he never suffers from the colic of self-conceit is 
proof positive that his digestive apparatus is so perfect 
that if you were to call him a Solomon he would man- 
age to assimilate it. 

But seriously. There is no such thing on God's green 
earth as a self-made man. There are men, it is true, 
who, by raking advantages of opportunities, achieve 
wonderful results. There are other men who, in the 
absence of opportunity, do T^onders. But no man, un- 
endowed by his Creator with brains to start with, ever 
did anything out of the common. And what is more to 
the purpose, he i ever will. Hence all this talk about 
self-made men is all bosh and stuff o' nonsense. But 
the term "self-made" is hardly ever used except in refer- 
ence to somebody who has acquired money, and it re- 
quires no extraordinary sense to do that. In fact, the 
brainier men of all ages have generally been poor, while 
it is equally true that as a rule wealthy men leave noth- 
ing to show they ever existed except their property, and 
they would not leave that if they could carry it away. 

The moral. Do the best you can, and never for one 
moment be led astray with such nonsense as we have 



59 

pointed out. Self-made men! Fiddle-sticks! Every- 
one is the creature of circumstances. Your man of 
genius, travelling tracks before unknown, opening new 
vistas for the human mind, cracking the skull of com- 
mon sense with his mighty idea, is acted upon himself 
by unseen forces. The poor hod-carrier, bearing his 
burden of brick, and singing as he goes, fulfills the law 
of his being, and is as much of a self-made man in his 
way as any one else in theirs. Do not be a fool. If 
Cincinatus had done nothing else but guide the plough, 
you would have never heard of him. Every ploughman 
is not a Cincinatus. Neither is every Cincinatus a 
ploughman. Don't forget that. 

CHAPTER XIII. 

THE FASHION"ABLE OLD FOOL. 

This species of Old Fool, like all the rest of his breth- 
ren, is of ancient lineage. While those already enumera- 
ted knew it all in their respective spheres, he "fills the 
bill" in his. When he lives in the country, which is 
seldom the case since the extinction of slavery, he can 
only contrive to hang on to the fag end of the proces- 
sion of fools. He occasionally takes an airing, but most 
frequently he shuts himself up in his house like the 
Mikado of Japan or the Grand Typhoon, being evidently 
under the impression that if he shows himself in pul lie 
he will become too common. He is not out in this cal- 
culation for it is very probable that should he show 
himself too frequently, the edge of his gentility would 
be dulled. Unlike his city brother, he does not consult 
the tailor so often, and in consequence catches on to the 
latest "agony" in dress just as another is coming in. 



60 

This always gives him an outre, not to say bizarre ap- 
pearance among his fellows. They all, however, give 
him the right hand of fellowship and invite him and 
his to all their select gatherings, where Charles Augus- 
tus, redolent of cologne, clad in faultless attire with his 
hair done up a la mode, may be seen, and where Miss 
Dashabout, as beautiful as Venus and nearly as naked, 
may be found. Having sniffed the delectable atmos- 
phere of swell society until near day break, he departs 
to recuperate for the i ext round of genteel dissipation. 
And so he lives from one year's end to another only 
varying the monotony by a trip to some summer resort 
to repair his anatomy for the next season's gayety. 
Well, every man to his humor, as the play goes. 

But would you see the Fashionable Old Fool in all 
his glory you must go to the city, for there he blooms 
out in full perfection. But he enacts a curious role and 
far otherwise than that of his country cousin. He real- 
izes that butchers and grocers have no respect for per- 
sons, and so in order to prevent their plebeian feet from 
soiling his carpets he toils like a slave at his counting 
room all day in order to defray expenses. He leads a 
sort of Jekyll and Hyde life. On the market he con- 
tends for a reduction of the last fraction of a cent in the 
cost of a beefsteak. He damns the butcher, berates the 
tailor, and would in a business transaction "skin a flea 
for his hide and tallow." Later he is at home — a beau- 
tiful one — situated in the very heart of the creme de la 
creine. Rich lace curtains adorn the windows, costly 
carpets cover the floors. A piano costing $2,000 stands 
in the parlor, at which a dainty young creature too 
too sweet and ethereal for this world, and yet his daugh- 
ter nevertheless, is sitting, and as her beautiful fingers 
evoke some soul-stirring chords, she breaks forth into 



61 

that enchanting strain "Home sweet home, be it ever so 
lowly, there's no place like home." Pretty soon guests 
begin to arrive. Carriages roll up in front of the door, 
and out of their sides pour the swells and belles of the 
fashionable world. The whole building is ablaze with 
light. Soon is heard the sound of music and the ryth- 
mic clatter of merry feet as gay couple after gay couple 
prepare to go whirling through the mazes of the dance. 
Then comes a lull. A few moments afterwards and the 
whole room echoes to the lascivious melody of the Ger- 
man, or the voluptuous strains of the Avaltz. "On with 
the dance, let joy be uncon fined." "No sleep till morn 
when youth and pleasure meet." Of course not. That 
is why they meet. At midnight perhaps, the supper is 
spread costly, inviting and rare. Gotten up regardless. 
No splendid poverty tiere. No counting of noses there. 
That was done beforehand. "Birds of a feather flock 
together." 

Here may be seen the effete civilization of the modern 
world running to waste. Here the young dude with a 
pair of gold rimmed spectacles astride his nose may be 
seen simpering and twanging his little nonsense into 
the ear of the banker's daughter — that sweet ethereal 
creature, too frail and delicate for this mean and every 
day world. Mrs. Cashier, ablaze with jewels, is chape- 
roning the gay throng. But where is the banker ? He 
has disappeared. "Indisposed and tired," say the 
family. 'I'he party at last worn out, breaks up at a late 
hour — an hour when most christian people are awakened 
by Chanticleer'e muffled crow. When the revellers 
awake the sun is high in the heavens. But alas, that 
"on night so sweet such awful morn should rise." 
Tnere is an omnious sound in the street. They open 
the blinds. They see an immense crowd in front of the 



62 

National Bank. The newsboys are howling in the 
streets at the top of their voices, ^'Here's your Daily 
Echo with an account of the Great Bank Robbery." 
They purchase the paper and the following startling 
head-lines as a prelude to what follows, makes their 
blood run cold: 

"STARTLII^G ANNOUNCEMENT — THE NATIONAL 
BANK ROBBED — FLIGHT OF THE CASHIER." 

"Our whole city was thrown into the wildest state of 
excitement this morning by the terrible discovery that 
the National Bank had been robbed by the cashier, Mr. 
"Howling" Swell. The exact amount of Mr. Swell's 
embezzlement has not yet been determined, but it will 
reach fully $100,000. Until yesteidaj evening not a 
breath of suspicion had ever been uttered in regard to 
Mr. Swell, but it having been observed for several 
days past that he seemed to be unusually reticent, which 
was quite contrary to his wont, a meeting of the presi- 
dent and directors was held in the bank and an inspec- 
tion made, when to their consternation the board dis- 
covered the crookedness of the cashier. It was resolved 
to keep this a secret until this morning and confront 
the guilty officer with his crime, but by some means he 
found out what was going on and is now doubtless on 
his way to Canada. 

"Previous to this discovery no man stood higher in 
the community than Mr. Swell. He occupied the high- 
est social position and his family were leaders in our 
most fashionable society, and no longer than last even- 
ing one of the most select gatherings in the city Avas 
held at his house." 

Poor Old Fool, to lose character, honesty and true 
social position. And for what? To please other fools 



63 

like himself, to keep in and up with a select lot of sim- 
ple idiots, who constitute the greater portion of the 
brainless '^upper ten," the "top of the pot," the efferve- 
scence, the scum which all sensible people know to be 
utterly worthless. An aggregregation of parvenus, lick- 
spittles and sychophants, who despairing of any merito- 
rioi:s fame, seek the cheap notoriety that is the twin 
product of conceit aud excluiveness — a lot of social 
pariahs, claiming the divine right to snub well born and 
well bred people simply because they are poor. Loose 
in living, lax in morals, living on the suburbs of Hell, 
and yet self -constituted arbiters of elegance. With all 
their brains in their feet, all their hearts in their pocket- 
books and all their souls — they haven't got any. 

Sad substitute indeed for that peerless society of by 
gone days in which every honest man was a gentleman 
and evfry virtuous woman was a lady. Phew I The 
Fashionable Old Fool of to-day is disgusting. 

Strange as it may seem this same Old Fool is some- 
times seen in the person of a fashionable young lady. 
This tender specimen is not only the first to follow the 
latest agony in dress, but always contrives to go a bow- 
shot beyond it. She uses slang so frequently you would 
conclude she took a diploma in the school where it is 
taught. She smokes cigarettes, and cuts up so many 
capers before high heaven as makes the angels weep. 
And yet she imagines her high social position, the dis- 
tinction of her family ,and her wealth will permit her 
to do all these things and still be considered a fine 
young lady. Her idea of fineness is so thin that no 
sensible person could see it through a microscope that 
magnified 600 times. Of all the fools young or old to 
be met within society so-called, she is the most illustri- 
ous. Compared to her, that other little social green 



64 

horn who throws herself away ou some drunken wretch 
in order to reclaim him, is an angel. Both of them, 
however, know it all. The first regards her mother — 
unless she is an Old Fool also — as an antiquated fossil 
of the pre-social age, while the latter looks upon hers as 
entirely too mercenary to advise such a romantic piece 
of humanity as her daughter. 

CHAPTER XIV. 

THE CURIOUS OLD FOOL. 

Curiosity is said to be the mother of knowledge, and 
there can be no objection to this phrase being used as an 
incentive to non-studious children, when it is explained 
at the same time that there is a curiosity that is laud- 
able, but another just the reverse. There are thousands 
of things in this world like the Irishman's horse, which 
he said had but two faults. These were, firstly, he was 
hard to catch, and secondly, he was of no account when 
caught. A great majority of people, especially when 
young, are over-curious, but as they advance in life they 
learn better, and seek to know only what is allowable, 
comprehensive and useful. But the Curious Old Fool 
must know it all. He is a little more modest than the 
rest of his brethren, however, for while they know it all, 
he wants to know it, and will leave no stone unturned to 
accomplish his end. Although we are told in Holy 
Writ that the plan of salvation is so plain that a fool 
need not err therein, yet since he is not one of the fools, 
when his pastor calls he opens his battery of questions 
upon the preacher concerning the Trinity, the resurrec- 
tion, election, predestination, reprobation, how many to 
be saved, how many to be damned, and worries the poor 



65 

man so that he wishes the Curious Old Fool were either 
saved or damned already, in order that he might be rid 
of him. His industry, while prodigious, amounts to 
nothing. If he studied philosophy, instead of discard- 
ing the chaff in order to retain the wheat, he must have 
both. If he study chemistry and learn everything that 
may be useful, he is perfectly miserable because he can- 
not discover the philosopher's stone. If he study me- 
chanics, instead of contenting himself with useful ma- 
chinery, he wears himself and everybody else out trying 
to invent perpetual motion. 

The Curious Old Fool met Paul on his arrival at 
Athens and plied him with questions. He went to hear 
some new thing and to tell it. But when the apostle 
told him something useful he would not hear to it. 

The Curious Old Fool will sell his own land and spend 
all the money seeing other people's. 

When the Curious Old Fool appears in a female form, 
which is often the case, she is unbearable. When you 
dine away from home she must know every dish your 
neighbor put upon the table. If she stays away from 
church she must know how every lady in the whole con- 
gregation was dressed. If she has a husband, she fre- 
quently wonders if any other poor woman has one as 
sorry as hers — as stupid, dull and listless, and all be- 
cause her own is pulling his beard and wondering how 
in the name of common sense he will be able to pay that 
store account run up by bis wife last month. If her 
children talk, she wonders if Mrs. 8o-and-So's children 
are as bad as hers. If Mrs. Smith has a new hat, she 
will walk three miles in summer's heat or winter's cold 
to see it. But we might go on until doom's day and the 
half would not be told. Hence an end to the Curious 
Old Fool. 



OHAPTEK XV. 



THE OFFICIOUS OLD FOOL. 



The list of Old Fools to be met with in society would 
not be complete without an account of the greatest one 
to be seen there. And so before closing this branch of 
the subject we will endeavor to the best of our ability 
to smoke him out, and if possible bring the "old coon" 
down. We confess, however, to some misgivings on the 
subject, as many, more capable than ourselves, have es- 
sayed the bame task and failed. 

This Old Fool is the most universally despised of the 
whole tribe. The reason of this is quite plain. In him 
the distinguishing trait of the Same Old Fool is especi- 
ally exemplified. He not only knows it all, but even 
goes a bow-shot beyond the rest of his asinine tribe, and 
knows how to do it all. 

If a carpenter is building a house he is always on 
hand, and, although he has never worked an hour at the 
trade in his life, he feels fully competent to give in- 
structions not only to the workmen, but the head car- 
penter himself. Should that benighted functionary dis- 
regard his advice and fail to build the house according 
tojhis idea, the Officious Old Fool will say, "It was all 
owing to his not taking my advice." And should the 
carpenter, on the other hand, succeed, the Officious Old 
Fool will claim all the credit by saying, "He stole my 
idea at last." 

But where the joke comes in with most telling effect 
is when some great « nterprise, i\ quiring talent of far 
more than ordinary nature, such as the construction of 
a suspension bridge, mapping out the plan of a military 
campaign, the conduct of a navy. Ordinary mortals 
would be appalled if called upon to give advice even 



67 

concerning such gigantic undertakings. Not so with 
the Officious Old Fool. He knows all about the bridge 
business, although he never built one. He knows more 
about military affairs than Caesar cr Napoleon ever 
dreamed of, while as to a navy he lakes as naturally to 
that as a duck does to water. But while in his nati^e 
element in affairs of great pith and moment, he is equally 
at home in minor matters. He can pick a chicken bet- 
ter than the cook, ^nd bake better 'bread, although the 
only evidence to that effect is his own declaration. In 
fact, we would not swear to it that he has ever conceded, 
that he could not throw a rock like a wumtui. 

In the social circle be is equally immense. He can 
tell a joke so much better than anyone else, that he 
makes a point to interrupt anyone else who tries, in or- 
der to give the correct version. In argument he is so 
invincible that all who know him yield the point 
without a murmur, leaving I'avv and inexperiem ( d 
strangers to tussle with him. Lastly, he knows how to 
run a hotel. It has been said a little conceit is allow- 
able, a little more is insufferable, but to be filled with it 
from head to heel until the person in whom it reigns 
becomes pop-ejed, is perfectly sublime. 

The Officious Old Fool cannot be spared just yet. He 
is the subject of more practical jokes and affords more 
fun to the "boys" than any other one source in creation, 
even if we do despise him. Theie is nothing so pleas- 
urable as making a man the dupe of his own conceit. 
On one occasion one of these smart Alecks was seen ap- 
proaching a group of men sitting in a porch facing an 
orchard. Knowing his style, the owner of the orchard 
sang out, ''I am glad to see you, Mr. Aleck. I have just 
asked every gentleman present why that particular tree 
(at the same time pointing ii out) has no apples on it, 



68 

while every other one near it is loaded. Can you tell me 
why?" "just wait a minute," said x\leck, as he lifted 
himself over the fence, "and I will tell you." Return- 
ing in a few minutes he exhibited a piece of the apple 
tree covered with black spots. "There's the cause," re- 
plied he, pointing to the spots. "Wrong," says the 
owner, "that tree was loaded with apples like the rest, 
but I gathered them yesterday." 

Sometimes the Officious Old Fool takes it into his 
head to study medicine, and when he does, woe be to the 
rest of the fraternity. Every man who dies in the whole 
community while in the care of another physician, was 
wrongly treated, and might have been saved had he been 
called in. Sometimes, nay, oftentimes, the Officious 
Old Fool is seen in the person of a mid- wife, and gives 
the physician in charge "a piece of her mind," and the 
whole cloth of her tongue. Horses have flies and dogs 
have fleas to sting them and bite, and so is the Officious 
Old Fool, whether in the form of a man or woman, 
compelled to endure the slings and arrows of this walk- 
ing and palpitating nuisance. 

As the fly and the flea, the cockroach and the black 
gnat, no doubt have their uses, so has the Officious Old 
Fool. But what it is God only knows. 



CHAPTER XVI. 



THE SENSITIVE OLD FOOL. 



The Science of Botany has a rare fascination for a cer- 
tain class of minds, and of those who won world-wide 
fame in its pursuit was Linnaeus. His classification of 
plants w^as simply wonderful. But it is not so much 
with the science of botany we wish to deal in this chap- 
ter as it is to call attention to the fact that there are 
certain resemblances between some plants and members 
of rhe human family. For instance, there is the Sensi- 
tive plant, which, upoi- a mere touch will close its pet- 
als and remain so until the dews of evening begin to 
fall. And this foolish little green thing always recalls 
to the mind another something equally as green in the 
human family. We refer of course to the Sensitive 
Old Fool. It does not matter whether this specimen be 
male or female, you feel as if you were handling dyna- 
mite all the time you are talking to them. Why, if you 
try to make yourself pleasant by telling a joke, he (and 
especially she) will begin to grow red in the face and 
believe for all the world the point of the jest was aimed 
entirely at them, and wind up by refusing to say another 
word the rest of the evening. Again, if some one dis- 
dlstinguisbes himself, and you allude to it in terms de- 
servedely flattering, the Sensitive Old Fool will consider 
all you have said as a reflection on himself. If the Sen- 
sitive Old Fool is a young woman who has some reputa- 
tion for beauty, woe to that man who praises another's 
charms. She will get as mad as a hornet and "cut" 
him dead the next time she meets him in the company 
of others. The Sensitive Old Fool is very often a liter- 
ary person, and should some article of his be rejected by 



70 

a magazine or review because it is of no possible interest 
to any one except himself, he becomes as unconsolable 
as a woman of forty when her last old beau goes off and 
marries some one else, and vows the whole literary world 
is a consp racy against him. Now the truth of the 
whole matter is just simply this. The Sensitive Old 
Fool like all the rest of his tribe imagines that he knows 
it all and that he is perfection itself, and anything that 
crosses that cheris; ed conviction of his wounds him to 
the quick. See ! 

CHAPTER XVII. 

THE CONSCIENTIOUS OLD FOOL. 

Beware of the man who has too much conscience or 
you will rue the day you formed his acquaintance. We 
would as soon trust the honesty of a man whose fa\orite 
method of beginning any conversation is "Now, to be 
perfectly honest with you," as we would the other. 
When we ask him to assist us in something which bet- 
ter men than he practice all their lives, and the old ras- 
cal refuses to do so for some hidden, selfish reason, and 
yet tries to cover up his meanness by saying: "I would 
gladly do so but for conscientious reasons." Consci- 
ence! fiddlesticks. He never knows he has any until 
the Devil is about to seize him. 

But seriously, ti e harm the Conscientious Old Fool 
has done in this world is fearful to contemplate. Look 
at the long line of martyrs burnt at the stake. Look at 
the deluge of blood it has caused. Look at the massa- 
cre of St. Bertholomew, the trail of the Duke of Alva 
and see. Of all the Old Fools the Conscientious is the 
most dangerous and the moct dreadful. Such a senti- 



71 

ment as pity is utterly unknown to him. You might 
as well appeal to the mercy of a Bengal tiger as to such 
as he, where that conscience of his is involved. In 
short, nothing in this world is better than an enlightened 
conscience, and nothing is worse than an unenligntened 
one, and to this latter category the Conscientious Old 
Fool belongs. Beware of all such. 



PART THIRD. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE MECHANICAL OLD FOOL. 

As might be infenvd such a large and intelligent body 
of American artisans would not escape such an infliction 
as the Same Old Fool. Nor do they. He is there in 
full force. He generally manifests his early genius by 
the invention of a rat-trap or a wind-mill, and his destiny 
is assured. The whole family unite in praises of his 
great mechanical genus, and by the time he is fourteen 
years old he is a confirmed crank. Instead of seeking to 
add improvements to some machines already in existence, 
or inventing a new one which would be of some practi- 
cal use to the world, his whole soul is bent upon invent- 
ing something which every other Mechanical Old Fool 
has been tinkering over ever since the world began, and 
failed. As a general thing perpetual motion is his main 
hobby, as it has been from time immemorial of all the 
rest of his tribe. To this subject he devotes days and 
nights to develope his idea, and then goes to work to 
construct a model. This proving a failure, he lays it 
aside, and again goes a setting to hatch out anothtridea 
with the same result. It wont work. And so it goes 
on from year to year until his whole bouse is so filled 
with gim-cracks and models that it would be dangerous 
to walk across the floor in the dark, for just as like as 
not you would stumble over a model and crack your 
skull in doing so. 

Meanwhile his family (if he is so lucky as to have one) 
mnst work like galley slaves to keep him and themselves 



73 

from going to the poor-house. If the efforts of the old 
goose were not so ridiculous his patience would be 
sublime. By the time that unfortunate creature — his 
wife — has lived with him five or six years, she is com- 
pletely cured of the hallucination that her husband is 
anything but an Old Fool, and "makes no bones" of 
telling him so. Such little trifles as these, however, do 
not deter him in the least. It only confirms him in an 
opinion he has long maintained, and which for pruden- 
tial reasons he has kept secret, "that women have very 
little sense anyhow." Such a trifle as an empty meal- 
tub, which is the normal state of his household, never 
troubles him in the least, and although the good old- 
fashioned gate to his yard is off its hinges, and the cows 
are devouring his wife's flowers and the pigs I'ooting up 
his yard, still it is beneath the notice of a great inventor, 
such as he, to pay the least attention to such minor mat- 
ters. As a general thing he is very illiterate,'as he has 
no time to devote to such a frivolty as education. In 
fact, in most cases he has a contempt for a fellow with 
^^book larninJ^ In his personal habits he discards the 
idea, or perhaps never thought of it, that cleanliness is 
next to godliness. It may be even doubted whether he 
even knew there were two such words in the dictionary. 
As a result of this his face and hands would generally 
furnish a capital sign for a real estate agency. 

As to advising him. if you should insinuate that he 
had mistaken his talents, he would set you down as a 
confiimed idiot, or his very worst enemy. He knows it 
all. Of course he does. And so he goes on from year 
to year, pegging away at perpetual motion, until at last 
he pegs out himself, and leaves the job to bis successor, 
the next Mechanical Old Fool. 

Some years ago there lived in one of the counties of 



74 

Piedmont Virginia one of these old cranks, who had set 
his mind upon inventing a flying-machine, which he 
termed artis avis — bird of art. He devoted years to it, 
spending thousands of dollars experimenting upon it. 
Meanwhile the war broke out, and a grand idea seized 
the poor old man. He conceived the plan of attaching, 
a bomb-basket to it, and proposed to clean out the Yan- 
kees by dropping shells upon them from the sky. In 
order to c^rry his idea into practical operation, he visited 
the Confederate army around Richmond, and made 
speeches to the soldiers in behalf of his invention, which 
was as follows: Having perfected his machine, he would 
sail over Dutch Gap, arid dropping a bomb or two from 
the sky, would knock Ben Butler into the middle of next 
week. Having done this, he would set his valves and 
compound blow-pipes to work and sail over to Wilming- 
ton, raise the blockade there, ditto Charleston. Then, 
pluming "his wings for a still longer flight, he would 
navigate the air until he stood over New Orleans. This 
would be his grand coup. Having knocked Farragutt 
and his whole fleet clear out of the Avater, and freed the 
Crescent City, he would strike a bee-line for Richmond, 
where he would hold a g'and pyrotechnic disp''ay in 
honor of this victory and the achievement of Confederate 
independence. In order to do this, he would load his 
bomb-basket with sky-rockets, and shoot them downward 
instead of upward. Poor old fellow. The Confederacy 
*^went up" and the rockets r^ever came down. The last 
we ever heard of him was to the effect that having con- 
structed his machine, he built a high scaffold, flew off, 
struck the ground and neatly killed himself He made 
no further efforts after this. 

We have in mind another even more ridiculous still. 
An old crank of an inventor, whom we will call "Uncle 



■ 75 

Joe," had conceived a plan for raising "horses and cattle 
on the lift." This machine consisted of a long beam, 
say sixty feet long, supported at one end by two forks 
and through which it projected sutficiently to allow a 
rope to be fastened to it, the ends of which were to en- 
circle the fallen animal and be tied securely. The 
power, of course, was applied at the other end of the 
lever by bearing it down. 

Well, on one occasion one of his oxen was on the sick- 
list and unable to rise. It was in vain that the old man's 
family tried to dissuade him from experimenting with 
the sick steer. But nothing else would do, and so, hav- 
ing procured a blanket instead of a rope, it was passed 
around the body of the animal and fastened to the end 
of the pole. Then "Uncle Joe," a stout negro man and 
the writer, a mere boy, lay hold of the lever. They 
pulled away with all of their might, raised the steer 
from the ground, and just as they had him swinging be- 
tween heaven and earth one of the forks gave way. 
Down went the steer, up flew the pole, and the whole 
crowd rushed pell mellfrom the scene for fear of having 
their skulls cracked by the fall of the pole. As to the 
poor old ox, what little breath he had in him before was 
knocked out of him then and" there. This was "Uncle 
Joe's" last. And this is the last we shall say concern- 
ing the Mechanical Old Fool. 



76 
CHAPTER 11. 

THE AGRICULTURAL OLD FOOL. 

There are certain plants indigenous to one soil, cer- 
tain animals to one clime, but the Same Old Fool is 
neither cribbed, cabined nor confined within such limi- 
tations. No pent-up Utica confines his powers. At 
home and abroad, at sea and on land, in the blacksmith's 
dusky shop, in the elegant studio of the artist, in the 
hovel of the poor and in the palace of the rich he is 
equally at home. 

This being the case it follows, as a matter of course, 
that such a great body as the agriculturists of our coun- 
try cannot escape the poetry of his presence. The Ag- 
ricultural Old Fool is found in every neighborhood. 
He is a regular contributor to some weekly newspaper, 
and the caption of his article is generally, "Why farm- 
ing does not pay." He gives various reasons for such a 
state of things, all of which are plausible enough, but 
if the reader wishes to know why it does not pay in his 
case he should pay him a visit ' He will gen. rally find 
him too lazy to work, and as farming is work the whole 
thing is explained at once. If you tell him as much, he 
will set you down at once as a consummate ass, belonging 
to that ignoble herd who eat breakfast before sun up 
and supper after dark. In his opinion brain work is 
what makes farming pay, not industry, economy and 
good management, and as he has the brains he ought to 
know. We have seen several of these gentry in our day 
and time, and we have never known one who would not 
have landed in the pcor-house but for the labor and 
capital of others. 

Like all the rest of the Old Fools the Agricultural has 
a poor opinion of his fellow mortals engaged in the 



77 

same biisicess as himself. Presuming upon this igno- 
rance he sometimes gets at the head of any organization 
they may have and dictates policies for them which if 
pur>>ued would prove ruinous to them, but which in the 
end feathers his own nest. But as a general rule the 
Agricultural Old Fool is the greatest nuisance going. 
He prides himself on doing his own thinking, and al- 
though this is all he does, his thought crop never yields 
an idea worth having to an acre of foolscap. He is a 
great theorizer, (you never saw an Old Fool who wasn't) 
and if there be one supremely blissful moment in his 
whole existence it is when he can find some one silly 
enough to act in accordance with his ideas. Nothing on 
earth will convince him of his error. Although his 
corn crib is burglar-proof from lack of temptation and 
his stock so lean that they hardly cast a shadow, and al- 
though his prosperous neighbor, Mr. A, who never theo- 
rized an hour in his life, makes tobacco that sells for 
forty cents a pound, and although his own wife, contend- 
ing with an empty meal tub and a meatless smoke house 
two-thirds of her time, has again and again informed 
him that he is tho most good-for-nothing man in the 
whole neighborhood, he is unmoved. The only thing he 
designs to answer is that "woman should keep in her 
speer." 

Oh, yes. We have seen the poor old fellow with a 
pair of pants on that had been patched to often by his 
wife that it would puzzle a tailor to decide as to the 
original color and texture of the cloth, still theorizing. 
We have seen him theorizing as to the best way to keep 
rats out of his corn house, when it had not held an ear 
of corn for six months. But singular to say, we never 
yet saw one theorize so as to keep his wife from doing all 
the work on the place. Like all the rest of the Old 



78 

Fools he has a poor opinion of woman, especially of his 
wife. AqcI this, by the way, is the only good piece of 
property he has, and the only one he despises. 

CHAPTER III. 

THE MEDICAL OLD FOOL. 

Of all the practical sciences that of medicine affords 
the widest field for the Same Old Fool to exercise his 
peculiar functions. It is very complicated to begin with, 
and this of it elf is a tremens nous weap n in his Lands. 
Secondly, the gullibility of mankind is just in his line. 
They know nothing of the composition of their own 
bodies, and as to the best manner of its preservation they 
are even behind the beas^ s of the field. Take the • tomach 
for instance. One -half, yes, two-thirds of mankind 
think the only office of that important organ is to re- 
ceive food. As to assimilation and digestion, they do 
not even know there are such words in the dictionary, 
much less their meaning. Gluttony kills more than the 
sword. And yet the world is run mad on eating and 
drinking. The ghost of Lucullus is still walking. 
Costly banquets are all the rage. A cook in ancient 
times was but one remove from a scullion, but now he is 
a great man in request. Cookery has become an art, a 
noble science. Cooks are gentlemen. It is true they 
wear their brains in their bellies and their guts in their 
heads. But what of that? Do not our gentry flock to 
the taverns as if born to no other end but eating and 
drinking ? Their bodies have become storage warehouses 
for edible and drinkable plunder of every kind. Is it 
any wonder the Medical Old Fools are abroad in the land 
when the field is white with the harvest? He sees his 
day and is glad. 



79 

As we have already noted the fact that the science of 
medicine is complicated and therefore difficult, to be a 
successful physician one must be a master of three king- 
doms, the animal, vegetable and mineral, for man is re- 
lated to all three. Tt requires years to obtr*in this neces- 
sary knowledge, and yet the Medical Old Fool, who never 
put his foot inside of a medical college or learned enough 
about anatomy to carve a chicken, sets all the doctors 
down in the land as a set of frauds and ignoramuses, 
while he of course, like all the rest of the Old Fools, 
knows it all. If he gets sick he will physic himself 
nearly to death on outlandish roots and herbs, and then 
in despair send for the doctor as a dernier resort. Should 
he die after doing so all the other Medical Old Fools in 
the conjmunity are unanimous in the opinion that the 
disciple of Galen finished him. On the other hand, 
should ths physician cure him he denies it in toto coelo 
and vows that his own decoction was at the bottom of 
his restoration. 

The scriptures tell us of certain men who believe a 
lie that they may be damned. The Medical Old Fool 
is much in the same category. He will not believe in a 
regular practitioner, nor a tried and well known medi- 
cine, but will go his whole length on a nostrum com- 
pounded by a quack and be killed. And this, by the 
Avay, is one good thing effected by patent medicines. 
They serve to thin out fools. 

But the Medical Old Fool knows it all. He has tried 
this, that and the other and never knew it to fail. Al- 
though a dunce he knowe all about anatomy, physiology, 
pa'hology and Materia Medica by intuition. Away with 
your musty treatises on the virtues of calomel, quinine 
and mercury wh^n hf can go out into his garden and 
pull up a weed or go into the woods and dig a root that 



80 

has more virtue than all three of them. 

Nothing is created in vain, and so the Medical Old 
Fool has his mission in life. But for him our doctors, 
like Othello, would find their occupation gone. The 
medical fraternity should erect a marble monument over 
the grave of each one that dies, and inscribe thereon, 

Sacred to the Memory of Our Best Friend. 
CHAPTFR IV. 

THE LEGAL OLD FOOL. 

The science of law is another complicated affair, re- 
quiring the most painstaking study in its acquisition, 
the most profound reason and searching analysis in or- 
der to its proper interpretation. It has employed, and 
ever will engage the full strens^th of the most gigantic 
intellects to pursue it, and yet the Legal Old Fool who 
whittles sticks and chews tobacco every summer after- 
noon at the village grocery to admiring rustics, thinks 
he knows it all from Justinian's Pandects to Henning's 
Justice, although he never heard in his life of either. 
He is as "full of wise saws and modern instances" as any 
Shakespearean Dogberry who ever lived. Blackstone 
may err in Common LaAv, Ohitty on Contracts, Starkie 
on Evidence, or Stephens on Pleading, but he is infalli- 
ble in everything. He has no hesitancy in demurring 
to the decisions of his county or corporation judge, but 
goes a bow-shot beyond all this, and disputes the acc-u 
racy of the chief justice of the United States himself. 
If his knowledge is profound his cheek is colossal. 

The Legal Old Fool may sometimes be found editing 
a newspaper, and when this is the case every quid-nunc 
in the county or town wishing to cheat a lawyer out of 



81 

the meagre price of a consultation, consults him through 
the columns of the daily or weekly Headlight, as the 
case may be. His answers to such questions are as in- 
fallible as those said to have emanated from the oracle 
of Delphos, and we may add, just about as lucid also. It 
frequently happens that the Legal Old Fool becomes a 
politician, and when he does so, he invariably pitches 
into the lawyers as having framed the most foolish set 
of laws that ever disgraced a statute-book, and promises 
the voters when he gets to the Legislature or Congress 
to have every one of them expunged and sensible ones 
enacted instead. Poor Old Foo: ! Should he ever get 
to either place and assert his personality, he would be- 
come a laughing-stock for the whole body. 

Sometimes he turns author, and writes a book entitled 
*'Every Man His Own Lawyer," which he contrives to 
sell to every stingy curmudgeon in the land for fifty 
cents or a dollar, and although the book is dear at any 
price, yet as all the natural-born fools are not dead yet, 
he reaps a rich harvest. 

Such is a faint outline of the Legal Old Fool. Like 
all the rest of his tribe, he is composed of about equal 
parts of conceit, knavery and superficiality. You need 
not expect to discover a profound Old Fool, for he no- 
where exists, and although the Legal Old Fool sets up 
that claim for himself, it has no foundation except in 
his own conceit. 

Occasionally he may be found in the ranks of the 
lawyers themselves, but that quick-witted fraternity soon 
remand him to the rear, from which he emerges as a 
candidate for office, as we have already said. Failing in 
clients to support him, he falls back upon constituents 
to do so, and as nine-tenths of them are bigger fools 
than he is himself, he often succeeds. 



CHAPTER V. 

THE LITERARY OLD FOOL. 

What man or woman who ever attended school has 
not either read or declaimed, or heard read or declaimed 
that little bit of doggeral beginning : 
Tall trees from little acorns grow : 
Great streams from little fountains flow — etc. 

Kow, we daresay, without fear of successful contradic- 
tion, that this little bit of prosy commonplace has been 
the means of flooding the world with more fools than 
anything else in the universe. Every little dunce in the 
community knows it by heart, and, worst of all, believes 
that he is the individual acorn that is going to produce 
this great tree named. In consequence, he takes up the 
absurd idea that all that is essential to true greatness is 
perseverence at whatever calling he may undertake. 
Should he be gifted with an abnormal memory, and thus 
be able, parrot-like to repeat other men's ideas in their 
own language, his silly excuse of a teacher or doting 
parents will give it out that he is a great literary 
"genus," and as soon as the boy hears of this, he be- 
comes ever afterward a confirmed crank. He begins his 
literary career by launching out into rhyme, containing 
neither measure, sense nor reason, and the whole family 
clap their hands at having a great poet in it. 

The little Homer is petted, carressed and coddled 
until he imagines old Milton, "ain't nowhere," while 
such nondescripts as Wordsworth, Byron and Shelley 
must not be named in his presence. His ode on " Spring'^ 
is taken to the nearest weekly newspaper office and sub- 
mitted to the editor. That keen-witted and hungry 
functionary, always on the alert for an "ad" or a new 



83 

subscriber, and knowing that all the poet's cousins, 
uncles, and aunts will enter their names on his books, 
and that out of the whole lot the prospect for a bushel 
of potatoes or a cord of wood is reasonably certain, takes 
pleasure in giving his readers the benefit of this effusion 
of genius. 

It is needless to say that after that the boy is ruined for 
life. You might as well be singing a psalm to a dead 
horse as trying to get him to follow any pursuit other 
than literature. He goes from bad to worse. When he 
has ground out a sufficiency of rhymes for the purpose, 
he publishes a book. The book sells for two reasons. 
People that never did believe he had sense enough to 
write one, buy it out of pure curiosity, while all his 
friends that never knew any difference between a con- 
ceited ape and a genius, take him for the latter, and of 
course, buy it, and thus between the two he sells the 
whole edition. 

But somehow or other the Literary Old Fool never has 
any money. One would suppose this would put a stop 
to his foolishness. Not a bit of it. Has he not read that 
Homer was a beggar, Milton as poor as a church mouse, 
Goldsmith a never-do-well ? And is it to be supposed 
that while he is in such illustrious company, he ever 
envies the double-chinned sons of filthy lucre, who in a 
few years will return 

To the vile dust from which they sprung, 
Unwept, unhonored and unsung! 

In nearly all cases the Literary Old Fool has a wife. 
Her career is a sad one. The only things with which 
she is supplied are brats and candle-lighters, and her 
whole time is employed in sewing up rents, not which 
the envious Casca made, but in the trousers of five or six 
young Miltons in embryo. Could she sell her candle- 



84 

lighters at a cent a hundred, she would realize more 
than her inspired husband does on the rest of his manu- 
scripts. 

The Literary Old Fool will not be advised by anybody. 
He generally selects for his subject something of neither 
interest nor profit to any one, and treats it in such a dry 
and formal manner that no live publisher in the land 
would give a dollar for a ton of it. Thus he goes 
through life, trying with the wings of a bat to imitate 
the soaring of an eagle, and dies at last a complete fail- 
ure in everything but one — perseverance. 

What a pity that so many valuable rail-splitters are 
lost to the world because one with an abundance of 
brains succeeded in becoming President of the United 
States. 



PART FOURTH 



CHAPTER I. 

THE PROPHETIC OLD FOOL. 

It may seem a little singular that in tracing the rami- 
fications of the various Old Fools which have one com- 
mon origin, that we should feel called upon to specify 
any one of the lot as the Prophetic Old Fool, seeing that 
the last mother's son of them claim the power of fore- 
seeing future events. But there is one of them, how- 
ever, who has been, and is now, so much in evidence that 
we feel we should be derelict in our duty to a long-suf- 
fering public not to expose him by giving him the bene- 
fit of a whole chapter. 

That the Prophetic Old Fool is a false prophet goes 
without saying. But there is a marked difference be- 
tween the ancient and modern specimen. The former 
always claimed illumination from a Superior Being as a 
basis for his vaticinations. The modern, however, will 
not allow that there is any being superior to himself, 
and hence claims to furnish his own oil that gives him 
light to foresee future events. Oh, no ! The Prophetic 
Old Fool is too jealous of his reputation to divide honors 
with his Maker or the Devil. He never begs the ques- 
tion in any such puerile manner ; never. Again. Every- 
Prophetic Old Fool has his specialty. The ancient 
specimen confined himself mainly to famine and the is- 
sues of war, and he generally took a rose-colored view of 



86 

the future. The reason the old rascal did this was be- 
cause they were employed by princes and rulers, and 
fearing the loss of "backsheesh" if they told the king 
anything unpleasant, they chose lines of prophesy agree- 
able to the ruler's wish and the welfare of their own 
bellies. 

The modern specimen, however, is generally a pessi- 
mist, and never seems to be completely happy until every 
one else is made miserable by his own predictions, for if 
they are unhappy from any other cause he is never satis- 
fied until he has made them still more so through his 
own agency. His hobby is generally the weather and 
earthquakes, and the worst of storms and the most ter- 
rible seismic disturbances alone seem to inspire his pro- 
phetic soul. He fairly revels in coming cyclones and 
chimeras dire. Occasionally he hits the nail on the 
head, aud his reputation is made. As an ir stance read 
what follows: 

"Herr Falb, the earthquake prophet of Vienna, sud- 
denly achieved fame last spring. He said Greece would 
be shaken by an earthquake on April 20th, and the event 
actually came off according to Falb's programme. There 
was a slipping of the unstable rocks underlying the At- 
lantic Channel. A terrible shock buried some hun- 
dreds of Phocians in the ruins of their homes, shops, or 
churches. All Greece was shaken, Italy felt the tremors, 
and seismic instruments as far away as southern Eng- 
land recorded the disturbance. It w^as a sad day for 
Greece and a great day for Falb. The prophet had hit 
the nail exactly on the head. The chance that he would 
do so was rather less than that he would draw a prize in 
a lottery, but he did it. 

If Herr Falb had now retired on his laurels they would 
not have faded so rapidly, and he would have saved 



87 

Greece no end of anxiety and distress. Unfortunately 
the spirit of prophesy was upon him and could not be 
suppressed. The Viennese seer opened his mouth again 
and told the world that on May 5th, Greece would once 
more be shaken, and Athens would be destroyed. 

*-Poor Greece had not yet buried all the dead who had 
been crushed under the falling walls of April 20th, and 
Herr Falb's new prophesy sounded in her ears like the 
crack of doom. Not only ignorant people, but also men 
^nd women of intelligence and education, were over- 
w^helmed with nervous apprehension. In his report on 
the earthquakes in Greece in 1893 and 1894, which 
Prof. Mitzopulos, of Athens, has just published, he gives 
a short but graphic account of the needless suffering 
which Falb's words inflicted upon the people of the 
capital. 

"Twelve days before the date fixed by Falb for his 
next earthquake, the details of his prophecy were tele- 
graphed to Athens. Every effort of scientific men to 
reassure the public was in vain. They wrote to the 
newspapers that Falb's alleged omniscience as to seismic 
phenomena was pure humbug, and that his prophecy 
was based upon no knowledge or theories that entitled it 
to consideration. They might as well have talked to 
the winds, for one stubborn fact overtopped all other 
considerations in the public mind. Herr Falb had pre- 
dicted the earthquake of April 20th, and what he had 
done once he might do again. 

"Business was largely suspended some days before the 
dreaded May 5th. On the night before the expected 
catastrophe few people in Athens and Piraeus slept. 
Most of the people had abandoned their houses and were 
in the streets and fields. Many others took refuge in the 
barks and ships, and waited from minute to minute the 



88 

expected destruction. Many were frightened into sick- 
ness, some died, and a number of panic-stricken women 
suffered from premature childbirth. The scare did not 
entirely subside for days after Falb had been proved to 
be a false prophet. A great earthquake is usually fol- 
lowed by a period of frequent earth tremors until equili- 
brium is restored among the disturbed rock strata. As 
long as these tremors continued, thousands of people be- 
lieved that Falb's second earthquake had been only de- 
layed, and was sure to come." 

To conclude with one more observation : The Pro- 
phetic Old Fool of the past was generally put to death 
for his failure to realize rose-colored predictions. The 
modern, however, has been discounted so often that peo- 
ple look for better times ahead whenever he begins to 
vaticinate, and hence he escapes. Like all the rest of 
his tribe, however, "he knows it all." 



CHAPTER 11. 

THE WEATHEK-WISE OLD FOOL. 

Considering that the state of the weather, present and 
future, is the prelude to nearly all polite conversation^ 
and that moreover, it is a subject of sui passing interest, 
it is no wonder that the Weather-Wise Old Fool should 
bob up serenely with his fore casts. 

This species is confined almost exclusively to the 
rural districts, where he occupies an enviable position 
in society in the triple role of ''guide, philosopher and 
friend." The reason of his operations being confined to 
the country is owing to the advent of the weather-bu- 
reau with its concomitants of flags and signals, denoting 
the advance of hot and cold waves, of sunshine and 



89 

storm to the denizens of cities. And it may be added 
that the weather signal has the same effect upon the 
Weather- Wise Old Fool that a red flag has upon a bull. 
And why should it not? No man can bear to have the 
ground swept from under him, or see his occupation 
gone. And that is just what science is doing for the 
Weather- Wise Old Fool in the cities. Now it goes with- 
out saying that in the country where such innovations 
are unknown, the old fellow is still cock of the weather, 
if not of the walk, and has an undisputed empire over 
the atmosphere and the clouds. 

Like all true philanthrophists he makes no charge for 
his services except a tribute to his foresight and an ac- 
knowledgement of his prophetic genius. There are said 
to be " tricks " in all trades, and the Weather- Wise Old 
Fool is as full of them as an egg is of meat. He has 
hundreds of "signs" which he never knew to fail. For 
instance: "If the wind blows from the south for 48 
hours you may certainly expect rain." "If it clears off 
cold after a rain, expect frost." "If the moon changes 
in the .morning before 7 o'clock, look for a change in 
the weather." 

The observant reader will please notice that he inserts 
an "if" before each prediction. This reservation afford- 
ed by that little word "if" is the loop-hole through 
which he always escapes in case of failure. He is too 
sharp to be found indulging in such a rare luxury as a 
clear-cut prophecy. He is not to be caught napping in 
that way. Were he, for instance, to say: "To-morrow it 
will rain, then clear off, and bring a killing frost," and 
he should slip up, farewell all reverence for the Weather- 
Wise Old Fool. We would have no more respect for him 
than for a sucked orange or a played out politition. 
This Old Fool has been in existence like the rest of his 



90 

tribe from time immemorial. Even the Savior of man- 
kind, over 1800 years ago pointed him out by way of 
rebuke when he quoted him as follows: "When it is 
evening, ye say it will be fair weather, for the sky is 
red." "And in the morning, it will be foul weather 
to-day, for the sky is red and lowering." 

Of course we do not mean to intimate that the Weather- 
Wise Old Fool is not sometimes right in his fore casts. 
How can a man who is always guessing fail to "hit it 
sometimes/' especially in such a changeful thing as the 
weather ? But the beauty of it for the Old Fool is, that 
people always remember his predictions which come true 
and forget those which are false, although I he latter con- 
stitute an overwhelming majority of his vaticinations. 
There is a class of weather, however, which defies all the 
predictions of this rural philosopher, and that is dry 
weather. Knowing this, the whole tribe of them have 
united on a maxim covering this emergency exactly, and 
that is, that "all signs fail in dry weather." Eecogniz- 
ing this, the Weather-Wise Old Fool is as coy in giving 
an opinion at such times as a young miss in saying "yes," 
when she has a half dozen suitors. 

Still we have a grateful appreciation of the Weather- 
Wise Old Fool. In our young days when invited to so- 
cial gatherings a day off, we always consulted him, and 
when he predicted a rainy night we consoled ourselves 
with the rellection that the Old Fool did not know what 
he was talking about, and nearly always failed, and 
when he "struck it right" it made no difference. Then 
again, he has his uses. He supplies a long felt want in 
fashionable circles. One-half the people you meet there 
have'nt got sense enough to talk about anything else, 
and the -weather is lugged in to fill that aching void. 
Indeed it is quite refreshing to hear some fashionable 



91 

young debutant declare upon her word it is the coldest 
weather she ever felt, on her way to the party, although 
wrapped from head to foot in the warmest of furs, and 
when after she has goti en there and appears in ball room 
dress, almost equivalent to no clothes at all, she again 
declares that it is the most delightful evening she ever 
spent. 

We could say more concerning the Weather-Wise Old 
Fool, but as the reader, no doubt, is blessing him for 
having fooled him or her so often, we will allow them to 
conclude the chapter without further assistance from us. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE PRACTICAL OLD FOOL. 

Such a thing as an absolutely prideless man is not to 
be found. It matters not if he be as ugly as the devil 
is reputed to be; as mean as sin, as ignorant as the aver- 
age politician, still he is proud of something. We knew 
a man once who had contracted a habit of moving his 
nose as much as his lips in ordinary conversation, and 
when reminded of it, replied, that "all great men 
had their peculiarities," and left us to infer that this 
was his. 

Just so with the Practical Old Fool. Wliile the vast 
majority of mankind are carried away with the charms 
of genuine eloquence, gaze with rapt emotion upon the 
masterpiece of a great artist, while the poet's eye, in a 
fine frenzy, rolling glances from heaven to earth and 
from earth to heaven, and sees more devils than vast 
Hell can hold, the Practical Old Fool sees and hears 
nothing. A fine oration to him is not worth the time 
consumed in its delivery ; the masterpiece of painting 



92 

not worth the canvas on which it is drawn, while as to 
poetry it is "plumb" foolishness. Although the Creator 
has studded the heavens with stars and beautified the 
earth with flowers, he holds star-gazers and flower-lovers 
as little less thau lunatics. 

And yet he thinks it a sign of true greatness to con- 
demn all these things. The old goose ! As if any 
great man from Adam's day to this was not endowed 
with an imperial imagination. As if the true test of 
human greatness were not creation and invention, and 
that without imagination nothing great, humanly speak- 
ing, lias ever been evolved. Look at Homer, Virgil and 
Milton. Look at Demosthenes, Cicero and Henry. Look 
at Alexander, C^sar and Napoleon. Look at Archime- 
des, Newton and Kepler. Look at Phidias, Apelles, 
Leonardo, Raphael and Rubens. Look at all the world's 
immortals, all gifted with godlike imaginations; devotees 
at the shrine of what was considered the impractical. 
Look at these things, Practical Old Fool ! and learn 
that you do not know it all. 

The Practical Old Fool prides himself furthermore 
upon the idea that he alone pursues what is useful. 
Sordid wretch that he is. As if the power that helps to 
restore fallen man to the image of his Maker ; as if the 
charm of Beauty did not give one a foretaste of Heaven ; 
as if the poet's song and the orator's plea have not 
breathed courage into souls ready to sink with despair. 
*' Turnips and potatoes, dollars and cents !"' " Beef, 
beef !" cries the Practical Old Fool, while the land rings 
with patriotic rejoicings. 

But the Practical Old Fool has his uses, and if he did 
not pretend to know it all no one would complain. Some 
one must feed the hogs and salt the cows, and as he 
is fond of this employment and no one objects to his 



93 

doing so, what right has he to set in judgment upon 
others. It is always honorable for a man or woman to 
fulfill the design of their Creator, but when they arro- 
gate to themselves that the Maker sets a special pre- 
mium upon the occupation of dunces the conceit of the 
thing becomes colossal. One thing well done is better 
than a thousand partly done. One great idea, developed 
by a master mind, outweighs all the crudities of all the 
Practical Old Fools who ever lived. 

Again, the Practical Old Fool prides himself on " get- 
ting there." Getting where ? To the warmest seat at 
the fire, to the best bed in the house, the advantage in a 
horse trade, the last word in a quarrel, the first blow in 
a fight. Oh, yes, in all things selfish he is easily first. 
Your great man, your divine man, is above such mean- 
ness. If an inventor, he labors for man, unknown in the 
recesses of poverty, whilst every Practical Old Fool in 
the whole neighborhood is taunting him with the idea 
that his machine is not practical. So it was in the 
beginning, is now and ever shall be to the end. The 
Practical Old Fools have stood and will stand around 
men of whom they and the world are not worthy, and 
hoot at them as "impracticable," and just as soon as the 
invention or idea has been fully developed, seized it and 
rode it to death. Out with such barren and graceless 
rascals 

The Practical Old Fool has one or two peculiarities 
which we must notice before we dismiss him. He always 
begins his conversation by saying " I am a very practical 
sort of a man." He labors under the impression that 
these cabalistic words will either give you an idea that 
he is " some pumpkins," or else it is a gentle reminder 
that he wants no " flourishes " in what you are about to 
tell him. Now, we have noticed that a man who talks 



94 

that way generally has less sense as to what is really 
practicable than anybody else. If it were not so he 
would adopt what was practicable and discard the rest. 
But as he wishes to get the idea of utility from you and 
then claim it as his own, he starts out as we have out- 
lined. 

But that the Practical Old Fool may see his absurd- 
ity in the strongest possible light, we will give him the 
benefit of an illustration. 

One of his tribe was taken sick. He sent for the doc- 
tor, and as soon as he arrived he informed the man of 
medicine that he was a very practical man, and that he 
wished him to make a thorough diagnosis of his case, 
and should he come to the conclusion after such exami- 
nation that he must die, to let him know. The doctor 
did so and informed him that there were nine chances 
that he would die to one that he would get well. He 
then asked the physician for his bill. The latter was 
dumbfounded, but the old fellow informed him that he 
was a very practical sort of a man and never invested 
in any business where the chances were so much against 
him, and as this was his last business transaction, he 
wished, as he had always done, not to sink any money 
with such a small margin in his favor. Having paid 
his bill for one visit, he then asked the doctor about 
how long he would live. Being informed that he would 
probably die on Thursday, he called his wife and said : 
" Mirandy, the Doctor says I'll die a-Thursday. If so, I 
want you to bury me Friday evening, kill the hogs Satur- 
day morning, and don't go moping about the house and 
forget your business, but salt 'em down good. Do you 
hear!" 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE STRICTLY BUSINESS OLD FOOL. 

While the hypothesis of the evolution of man from the 
lower animals is a proposition so ridiculous, that only a 
few leading fools have been led to adopt it, yet the evo- 
lution of certain Old Fools from certain conditions of 
society is not an open question. In fact, it is so self- 
evident as to admit of no argument. Take for instance 
the Strictly Business Old Fool. When the Money Era 
came upon the boards of time, it just as surely developed 
the Strictly Business Old Fool as did the Warlike Age 
produce such men as Hannibal, Caesar and Napoleon. 

The Stiictly Business Old Fool always has existed, 
but during other than the Money Era he was sternly re- 
pressed when his characteristics became manifest. x\s 
an evidence of this we need only cite your attention to 
the fact that the literature of all nations, and the re- 
sources of all the greatest writers, ancient or modern 
(the present time excepted), have been exhausted to find 
the most horrible adjectives with which to characterize 
misers, bribe-takers and such. Nowadays, however, a 
miser is an economical, prudent citizen, the bribe-taker 
is a capitalist on small means, and a thief is whittled 
down to an embezzler. 

Now, the Strictly Business Old Fool is not one of these 
exactly. He is the victim of his early environment — 
the product of circumstances. Beginning life generally 
in poverty, in his first game of marbles he contrives to 
cheat his playmates in every game, and when he is 
praised for so doing by his parents, considers himself a 
little hero, in spite of his juvenile rascality. A little 
later, being too stingy to eat, he is praised by his parents 



96 

for his frugality, and still later on, having accumulated 
a little money, while his brothers have not, he is pub- 
licly held up before them as "the coming man of the 
family." Thenceforth his destiny is assured. He is 
given precedence on all occasions, and by the time he is 
twenty- one years of age every old mammon- worshipping 
mamma in the whole neighborhood is telling her cimb- 
ling-headed daughters that he is the nicest }Oung man 
going. No wonder his head is turned. Even the par- 
son himself is piously inclined that way, and pronounces 
him a very promising young man. "Promising," as ap- 
plied to young men, once included powers of mind that 
might lead to fame and usefulness. Now it means noth- 
ing but the possibilities of wealth. 

Seeing the success of his policy, the Strictly Business 
Young Fool copies the manners of speech and dress of 
the Strictly Business Old Fool, and they become so en- 
amored of each other's abilities that they constitute a 
sort of mutual admiration society. 

But the worst remains to be told. The Strictly Busi- 
ness Old Fools having as a general rnle never read any- 
thing but day-books and ledgers, finally come to the 
conclusion that there is nothing else to be learnt of any 
account, and so despise all polite learning. In conse- 
quence, he has developed a new language — one as devoid 
of sentiment, soul and poetry as a meat-axe. Instead of 
saying, for instance, when he is recovering from a spell 
of sickness that he is "convalescing," he will tell the 
asker that he feels ten per cent, or twenty per cent, bet- 
ter as the case may be. When you do him a service, in- 
stead of making acknowledgement in correct English, he 
will blurt out, "Thanks" — a word which would make 
John Randolph turn over in his grave could he hear it. 
This is strictly business, however. When one of these 



97 



S trictly BusiDess Old Fools of a man marries a Strictly 
Business Old Fool of a woman there is hardly su fficient 
sentiment between the two to sweeten a cup of coffee. 
There is a close resemblance between the Solid Old Fool 
and the Strictly Business Old Fool. There is a differ- 
ence, however, in degree but not in kind. The Solid 
Old Fool is in station and the other in business. The 
Strictly Business Old Fool is in the chrysalis state, but 
the Solid Old Fool is the full blown butterfly. 

We are indebted to this class of Old Fools for one 
word at least, and that is the word "crank." Having 
no appreciation of such things as history, science, litera- 
ture, painting and music; having no sympathy with 
philanthropists and philosophers, unless those who are 
making piles of money, they designate them as cranks. 
]S[o man who is making money, hand over fist, is ever 
visited with this terrible denunciation. That is reserved 
for those who are toiling without fee or reward for the 
souls and bodies of their unfortunate fellow-men, who 
are not too strictly business to lend a helping hand to 
the poor drunkard and the fallen woman. 

We mean no disparagement by what we have written 
of the strictly business man. He is no kin to the Strictly 
Business Old Fool. As the just-too-sweet- to-live young 
man is the dude of the social world, so the just-too-mean- 
to live Old Fool is the dude of the business world. 



CHAPTER V. 

THE BUSINESS-HATING OLD FOOL. 

This Old Fool is the exact opposite of the other. 
While the former is an example of business-run-mad, the 
latter veers to the other extreme and hates any busines 



98 

at all. Now, it is really surprising how many fools of this 
sort there are in these United States, both old and young. 
Among the young women of the country especially the 
number is especially large. They not only have no busi- 
ness themselves, but absolutely turn up their noses at 
young men who have. Owing to a false education, pre- 
conceived notions, and a woful lack of good, hard sense^ 
they are under the impression that no man can be a gen- 
tleman who is compelled to work for his living. Tender 
idiots! As if any man who contrives to live without Ja- 
ber of some sort is not only a nuisance, but a thief and 
a robber. Your fine gentlemen and ladies of leisure, as 
a general thing, are not worth as much to the communi- 
ty as the poorest excuse of a carpenter or cobbler to be 
found in it. Captain John Smith, at Jamestown, in 
1607, had a lot of these "gentlemen of leisure" to con- 
tend with, and never got anything out of them until he 
established the rule that those who did not work should 
not eat. 

But if anything on this earth could furnish complete 
proof that all the fools are not dead yet, it is afforded by 
the number of people who believe that labor is degrad- 
ing. Why, even down your little fledgling of an orator 
would have us believe that his greatest effort cost him 
no labor at all; that he just got right up and spoke it 
by inspiration. And strange to say, there are thousands 
of fools in the world who believe every word he says, 
when if the truth were told, he has been pegging away 
at it for the last three months. Had he continued doing 
so for three months longer, it would not have beert 
amiss, and had he never spoken it at all it would have 
been all the better. Oh, no ! The windy little goose 
believes there is great merit in asserting that his effort 
cost him no labor, especially when we are reminded that 



99 



such men as Demosthenes, Cicero and Gladstone never 
mounted the rostrum until they were masters of their 
subjects, requiring the most extensive research, profound 
thought, and any amount of hard mental labor to bring 
it to perfection. If labor is degrading, such men as St. 
Paul, Milton, Washington, and every other really great 
man who ever lived, was the most degraded of the race. 
To hear them tell it, the evidence of a gentleman is his 
soft hands, tender feet, and the amount of time of which 
he robs his Maker and his fellowman, while lounging 
about, reading dime novels, and inculcating false ideas 
of the true nobility of life. 

The truth of the whole matter is, the w^hole country 
is cursed with Labor-Hating Old Fools who are not worth 
the ammunition required to put them out of the way, to 
say nothing of the amount of food and clothing they 
manage to consume, for every one of them eats, bless 
you, and even if he does despise the laborer, he is always 
on hand at meal-times, and eats what someone's labor 
has procured, with all the appetite of a quarter- horse. 

We have seen some of these Old Fools who hated labor 
so much, and looked upon it as so degrading, that they 
would lie abed of a morning until their wives had gotten 
up, kindled all the fires in the house, and even gone to 
the wood-pile in a blinding snow-storm and chopped 
stove-wood with which to get the Labor-Hating Old 
Fool his breakfast. But this specimen is of ancient 
date, and has a plenty of company to sustain him in his 
belief, as all savages, ancient or modern, have believed, 
and yet believe that labor is degrading, so much so that 
they seldom indulge in enough of it to get the dirt off 
themselves. And the same may be said of the thief and 
the robber. He, too, believes that labor is degrading, 
and hence, like the Labor-Hating Old Fools elsewhere, 



100 

makes his living from the labor of others. We do not 
imagine the Labor-Hating Old Fool will like his picture 
much. But whether he does or not, here it is, and if 
this is treason, make the most of it. 



VI. 

THE COMMON-SENSE OLD FOOL. 

That man is an idolater by nature is evident from 
several considerations. In the lower stages of his wor- 
ship, the object of his adoration is just as likely to be a 
snake or sonne other loathsome object in nature as any- 
thing else. If he is a little higher in the scale of being, 
bis god is an image or a stone. And then comes hero- 
worship after death as well as before. Lastly, after hav- 
ing been emancipated from these dumb idols and dead 
men, we have hi our day another set of worshipers, whom 
for want of a better word we will call Theory worship- 
ers. And we may add, the more absurd the theory 
the more devoted the worshiper. The patent medicine 
man for instance, not content with saying his nostrum is 
a specific, lays claim to a panacea for all the ills that 
flesh is heir to. In keeping with this idea certain theo- 
rizers claim that their ideas if carried out would revolu- 
tionize the world. Prominent among these is the Com- 
mon-Sense Old Fool. Although common sense never 
invented anything, yet after something has been invented, 
the Common-Sense Old Fool always gives it as his 
opinion that had the man of uncommon sense listened 
to him it would have been a great deal better. As every 
species of Old Fool in the universe is bottomed on some- 
thing, so that of the Common Sense order is based on 
selfishness and conceit. An old miser, with thousands 



101 

of dollars, hidden away, and who yet shivers in rags in 
winter, and starves himself to death in summer, is only 
common-sense rnn mad. Every stingy person has the 
credit of having lots of common sense, while the gener- 
ous one, however talented he may be, is said to lack it. 
Who says so? Why the Common-Sense Old Fool to be 
sure. His AmrZ-sight is remarkable. He can always tell 
to a hair where Napoleon, Grant or Lee made a mistake 
after they made it. Oh, yes ! Common Sense can sit be- 
fore a comfortable fire and criticise the genius who in- 
vented the axe that cut the wood that makes the fire. 
If a young lady, rightly divining the true intent of mar- 
riage and weds the man of her choice, poor though he 
may be, instead of marrying some rich Old Fool whom 
she cannot love, she is condemned by every Common- 
Sense Old Fool in the neighborhood. If a young man 
feels the kindlings of genius warming his soul for high 
emprise, every Common-Sense Old Fool feels a special 
call to advise that young man. He did his best to dis- 
suade Columbus from navigation, Newton from mathe- 
matics, Milton from poetry ond Napoleon from war- 
fare. Genius must always crack the skull of common- 
sense before one of its ideas can find admittance therein. 
By the way, what is common-sense but ordinary sense ? 
Does it possess some secret charm by which it distances 
genius in the race of life? None, except that of mean- 
ness: genius is unselfish, common-sense nearly always so. 
Genius is heavenly, common-sense of the earth earthy. 
It hardly ever looks beyond a full smokehouse and corn- 
crib. It lives for a day, not for all time. It believes 
more in the immortality of the body than it does in that 
of the soul. Gentle reader, do not mistake our meaning. 
A common-sense man and a Common-Sense Old Fool are 
not one and the same, for the foi'mer is content with his 



102 

endowment, but the latter imagines that common-sense 
is a panacea for all the ills that genius is heir to, and by 
special dispensation from on high he is the man to ad- 
minister it. But to end the matter. If common sense 
is a good thing is not uncommon-sense a better? Com- 
mon-sense enjoys the good things of this life, but genius 
creates them and has foretastes of the life to come. 



CHAPTEE VII. 

THE EDITOKIAL OLD FOOL. 

The Gypsies have been and are now the conundrum 
of the ages. Their first appearance upon the continent 
of Europe dates so far back that it cannot be stated pos- 
itively. Then, as now, they were a nomadic people, and 
to what i:ationality they belonged was unknown. All 
that is positively known now concerning them is they 
are human beings, that they have laws peculiar to them- 
selves, and that the great majority of them are thieves. 
But that they do belong to some nationality is certain; 
no man or woman exists upon earth who does not. 

Just so in the kingdom of Fools. There are the great 
nations of Fools, the petty republics of Fools and there 
are Fools, and many of them too, who seem to defy 
classification. The only thing certain about them at all 
is that they are Fools, and beloug to the great army of 
know-it-all. 

For instance, there is the Editorial Old Fool. He does 
not belong to the thoroughbred Literary Old Fool. He 
is not always, though very often, an Ignorant Old Fool, 
neither does the classification of the Learned Old Fool 
always include him. In many respects he defies classifi- 
cation, and about as near as one can get at the true idea 



103 

of what he is may be compassed by saying he is an Old 
Fool with a hobby. Now we do not mean to say that all 
the other Old Fools are without this apparently neces- 
sary appendage, but that the hobby of the Editorial Old 
Fool is peculiar, and while any other one rides his hobby 
to death, he makes you ride his to death instead, 
and not a week passes — we say week, for none of his 
class are allowed to edit a daily — but what he has some- 
thing to say on this all -important subject. It does not 
matter on which side of the controversy he may be, he 
always goes to the extrem^e. If his brother crank favors 
restriction and would endeavor to make man moral by 
legislation, he advocates personal liberty so loudly that 
one would imagine he preferred going to Hell drunk on 
his own accord rather than be forced to go to Heaven 
sober. In politics he is equally extreme. He cannot 
for the life of him imagine how any man should take 
other views than his own, and when they do it is primia 
facia evidence that he is a dishonest man. How could it 
be otherwise. He knows it all, and tells you all, and 
when you will not heed what he says you are a scoun- 
drel of course. 

There is one trait, however, that he has in common 
with every other Old Fool in the universe. Recognizing 
that mankind, somehow or another, will not acc-pt him 
as a general oracle, and consult him as such, he affects 
the " trick of singularity " and endeavors to become 
famous that way. Why we have known one of these 
Editorial Old Fools to devote a whole column to the 
death of an office cat, when he would only give a "stick" 
concerning the demise of the most eminent man in the 
State. 

We have said that he did not belong to the category 
of the Literary Old Fools, but occasionally he essays that 



104 

difficult role also, and when he does, if you wish to make 
him howl, you have but is criticize his production. Then 
indeed there is a tempest in his little teapot of a brain^ 
and one would imagine in reading his comments on your 
honest opinion that you had committed one of the seven 
deadly sins. 

Another weakness of the Editorial Old Fool is his 
fondness for taffy. Mischievous brother editors, cogni- 
zant of this fact, frequently stuff the old goose so full 
of it that he can scarcely contain himself, and while the 
mischievous editor aforesaid is nearly dying with sup- 
pressed laughter, the conceited victim of his blarney i& 
ready to die with joy. 

Poor Old Fool! Too often the tool of his inordinate 
vanity, he carries his head high, values his opinion im- 
mensely and imagines the whole town is ready to do him 
honor, when, if the truth were known, they look upon 
him as the most complete crank in the whole corpora- 
tion, if not in the entire State. If he should ever read 
these lines, which are written for his benefit, we trust he 
will lay them to heart and profit accordingly. But this 
is a vain hope, we fear, as he will be sure to imagine 
we are describing an editor other than himself, and so 
we might as well leave bim and pass on to the next. 

CHAPTER VIII. 

THE IMPECUNIOUS OLD FOOL. 

That most people are sensitive as regards any bodily 
defect of th^-ir own is quite evident to any observant 
person. Indeed, it frequently happens that one will in- 
cur the displeasure of such person by even inquiring if 
such be not the case. The following incident will il- 



105 

lustrate this fact: Two men, the one with defective 
eye-sight and the other with impaired hearing, were 
walking along the street together. "A fellow-feeling" 
makes us congenial, if not wondrous kind, and so quite 
naturally their ideas flowed in the same channel. At 
last, just as they were approaching a fine city church 
with a steeple one hundred and fifty feet high surmount- 
ing it, the deaf man said to the other: "Don't you 
despise for people to be always telling you that you can't 
see good ?" "Certainly I do," replied the other. "Why, 
I can see as good as anybody. For instance," says he, 
casting his eye to the "^ top of the steeple, "I see a fly 
crawling about on the top of that steeple." The other 
old fellow clapped his hands to his ear and replied, "I 
can't see him, but I hear him crawling about up there." 

Just so with any other shortcoming whatsoever. Now, 
poverty, nine times out of ten, is the result of one of 
two causes: extravagance, or want of judgment; but 
the Impecunious Old Fool cannot be convinced of this, 
but like all the rest, he knows it all. He imagines the 
whole world is in a conspiracy to keep him down. And 
such is his opinion of his own powers, that he imagines 
it takes the whole world to repress such a Titan as him- 
self. Some even go a bow-shot beyond this, and say not 
man but fate is against them, thereby intimating that 
but for supernatural power they would rise anyhow. 

If the Impecunious Old Fool had more sense and less 
conceit, he would never imagine such things as these. 
So far is the world from conspiring against him, it does 
not even so much as think of him. Another ignis fatuis 
which he follows is the belief that true merit will always 
be recognized, and inasmuch as he presumes that he 
possesses an abundance of that virtue, that he will finally 
be patronized and become either famous or rich, or both. 



106 

Poor Old Fool ! As if he did not know that nearly every 
real genius who ever lived, died of a broken heart, on 
account of the neglect and want of appreciation by a 
sordid, gain-seeking world. For a conceited ass like 
himself to turn cynic is ridiculous. Has he not seen the 
maimed soldier "begging bitter bread through realms his 
valor saved." Has he not seen the soldier's widow and 
his children in rags, while extortioners, who grew rich 
on army contracts, living in palaces, faring like princes, 
and surrounded by parasites and flatterers, worshipped 
as a demi-god in life and canonized as a saint after 
death? Poor Old Fool! As if mankind did not prefer 
to stake their chances of squeezing into Heaven through 
a needle's eye, rather than to be poor and go in with am- 
ple room. As if he did not know that two-thirds of the 
clergy even, are never convinced they have a call to 
another church, unless the salary is greater than the one 
they already receive. Poor Old Fool ! He prates of 
honorable poverty. Honorable po\erty indeed I "To 
fivoid which mankind take any pains, leave no haven, 
no coast, no creek in the world unsearched, although to 
the hazard of limb and life itself. To shun it men dive 
to the bottom of the sea, to the bowels of the earth in 
every zone. To escape it men become parasites, women 
prostitutes, swear, lie and damn their souls and bodies, 
forsake God, adjure religion, steal, rob and murder, 
rather than bear its intolerable yoke." 

Poor Old Fool ! Would you be honored, get rich. 
No matter if your brain would rattle in a mustard seed 
shell, no matter if you are gizzard-footed, blear-eyed and 
bandy-legged, you will be held in honor. No matter if 
in attaining it you plucked the last rag from the back of 
shivering infancy, or snatched the last crust from the 
teeth of starving childhood; no matter if you be a pagan, 



107 

a barbarian, a wretch, there will be myriads to bend the 
pregnant hinges of the knee, that thrift may follow 
fawning. You will be called a gracious lord, a Macaenas, 
a benefactor, a wise man. Your voice, like that of Her- 
od's, will be Vox Dei, non hominis — the voice of a god, 
not of man. Honorable poverty indeed "though he be 
honest, wise, learned, well-deserving, noble by birth, of 
excellent parts, yet in that he is poor, unlikely to rise, 
to come to honor or to office, he is contemned, neglected, 
despised; if he speaks, "What babbler is this? To 
be poor is to be a knave, a fool, a wretch, a villain. Say 
poor and say all." But of what avail is all that has been 
said. Impecuniosity is a disease to which no medi- 
cine can minister, and the Impecunious Old Fool lays 
the flattering unction to his soul, that only great men 
are subject to it, and that he himself is one of the most 
illustrious patients in all history. We have prescribed 
for him, but we have no idea our medicine will do him 
any good. His case is chronic and past all physic. The 
only thing to be dreaded is that he will leave a lot of 
young impecunious fools who will take up their father's 
grievance where he left it off. 

But it would be unjust to a great many good people to 
create the idea that there is no such thing as "honest 
poverty." But humanly speaking there is no such thing 
as "honorable poverty." "Poor but honest," not poor 
but honorable, may do. God's poor are few and far be- 
tween, but I he name of the Devil's paupers is legion. 
Poverty is generally the road to heaven. But a man suf- 
fering the pangs of hunger and cold and nakedness is 
more concerned about the Bitter Now than he is about 
the Sweet Bye and Bye. As "an empty meal sack will 
not stand upright," nothing but the grace of God can 
keep a poverty stricken man from falling into sin. If 



108 

he depends upon the appreciation of the world to sustain 
him, he will have his opinion only for his pains. We 
have no doubt there are millions of saints in Heaven, 
who thank God they were born poor, lived poor and died 
poor, nor that there are millions of rich men in Hell, 
who will wail through all eternity because they were 
born rich, lived rich and died rich. But the Impecuni- 
ous Old Fool will neither go to Paradise on account of 
his poverty, nor to Hell on account of his riches. He 
did not take his poverty as a blessing in disguise, but as 
a curse specially resting on a very great man, and which 
filled him with bitterness. Nor on the other hand would 
he have taken riches as the gift of God, but have at- 
tributed their possession to his own unaided genius, as 
many just such fools as he are doing every day, living 
like hogs and dying as they have lived. Their torment 
in a future state will be like that of Tantalus. 



CHAPTER IX. 

THE MATERIALISTIC OLD FOOL. 

When Drummond wrote his treatise entitled "Natural 
Law in the Spiritual World," although tracing much of 
correspondence and coincidence existing between the 
realm of Sense and the World of Spirit, yet to our way 
of thinking, he merely hinted at instead of discussed the 
proposition. For instance, instead of co-incidence there 
is co-relation. Physical objects are not the culmination 
but the types, not the realities but merely the shadows 
of things spiritual. '' What shadows we are and what 
shadows we pursue," when us:ed without reference to the 
things of time and sense can have no meaning. This is 
the realm of shadows, the life to come the realm of real- 



109 



ities. As as example, language is given us to express 
our ideas. Nature is the alphabet of creation, and when 
we become at all proficient in that, we are prepared for 
our first lesson in reading the language of the spiritual 
world. But we reverse the process, and instead of reason- 
ing from the known to the unknown, we put the cart 
before the horse and try to reason without a premise, and 
yet expect a just conclusion. And just see how many 
illustrious Old Fools we have from this very cause. Men 
who pretend to know everything about the Natural 
World, and scout the idea of the supernatural. What 
he calls " the Supernatural is all he does know, and his 
vaunted knowledge of the material world is a pure 
assumption. Take for illustration the idea of number. 
Ere a child is capable of reasoning, if you put a figure 
upon the board and ask him what it is, he will at once 
answer that it is the number which the figure in ques- 
tion is supposed to represent. If you then rub it out 
and ask him if the number has ceased to be, he will in 
all probability answer you in the affirmative, which you 
know is an absurdity. And yet the Materialistic Old 
Fool is not one whit better or wiser, for he reasons pre- 
cisely the same way in reference to any displacement in 
Nature. Let us illustrate still further on the same line. 
Place the letters C-A-T on the board and ask the child 
what it is, and he will at once, if sufficiently advanced, 
pronounce the word correctly. Eub it out as before, and 
ask him if the cat has ceased to be, and the answer will 
be the same as in the numerical proposition. Is the Ma- 
terialistic Old Fool one jot wiser than the child ? God 
has given us not only his own word as to the existence 
of a Spiritual World, he has given us Nature — the alpha- 
bet — the language of the spiritual world, and yet the 
Materialist, like the child, stops at the sign instead of 



110 



the thing signified, clings to the shadow instead of the 
substance, and yet calls himself a philosopher. From 
all such philosophy, Good Lord deliver us ! 

'• Know thyself " is one of the injunctions of Holy 
Writ. " Thyself " means the spirit, not thy body. If 
this were not possible the command would never have 
been given. If you know the nature of your own spirit, 
you are in a fair way to know the nature of any other 
spirit in the universe, as they are all related, and the 
same law governs the existence of each. 

But this is not the fact in nature. Knowing the 
nature of one plant is not knowing the nature of 
all. We often hear the expression " human nature is 
the same." Did you ever hear one silly enough to say 
that all natural objects are the same? It would be just 
as relevant to say that all the letters of the alphabet, or 
all numerical figures were the same. Everything in 
nature is merely the manifestation of an idea, emanating 
from Spirit, for apart from that what possible value 
could it have ? There is nothing in the material world 
valuable in itself. Its sole worth is the relation it bears 
to something else. If man had no idea of number, of 
what possible value to him were signs and symbols to 
represent it ? If man were not spiritual, of what avail 
to him were sun, moon and stars ? They could convey 
no idea to him of a spiritual world. And if they be not 
signs and symbols of a spiritual world, will the Mate- 
rialistic Old Fool explain the reasons for and of their 
existence ? They either stand for something or nothing. 
If for something, what else but an evidence of creative 
spirit ? If for nothing, what reason can be assigned for 
their creation and existence ? To sum up the whole mat- 
ter in a nutshell, the man who believes in spirit as apart 
from and above matter is a reasonable being. He who 



Ill 



does not is either in his childhood or dotage. And of 
such is the Materialistic Old Fool. 

CHAPTEE X. 

THE OPPOSITE OLD FOOL. 

The inventor of a new science always exercises the 
right to his own nomenclature in defining it. Take the 
science of botany for instance. Before the advent of 
Linnaeus, the Avorld knew comparatively nothing of the 
vocabulary of plants and flowers. Since his day, how- 
ever, it is flooded with polysyllables, descriptive of the 
simplest herb. Most of these verbal curiosities are tor- 
tured out of the Greek and Latin languages. It is the 
same with the science of medicine. There is a fitness, 
however, in the medical fraternity choosing a dead lan- 
guage, as their medium of communication, seeing the 
numbers of people they kill every year with their death- 
dealing compounds of Greek and Latin. 

We claim for ourselves the same right, having been 
the very first to classify, if not create the science of 
fools, we claim the right to label our own specimens, 
taking care, however, to make our meaning so plain 
"that a wayfaring man, though a fool, shall not err 
therein." 

In deciding, however, to describe the Opposite Old 
Fool, we were at a loss for some time what would be his 
legitimate title, but finally decided on the one made use 
of for the following reasons : The Opposite Old Fools, 
male and female, are exceptions to every general rule. 
They do not affect the trick of singularity for the pur- 
pose of notoriety, but like all the rest of the Old Fools, 
they think they know it all, and hence all they do is 
perfectly right and proper. 



112 



For instance, the Opposite Old Fool loves the opposite 
better than he does his own sex. He professes to find 
more real enjoyment in the company of un-ideaed,giggling 
young misses than he does in that of the most sensible 
and intelligent gentlemen. If the Old Fool would only 
acknowledge that such fondness on his part arose from 
his own lack of sense, nobody perhaps would blame him. 
But when he asserts that others fail to imitate his ex- 
ample because they cannot appreciate the fair sex, his 
conceit becomes insufferable. As a biting frost, how- 
ever, nips every green thing, so does a really sensible 
woman always paralyze one of these greenhorns of the 
masculine gender, and when he leaves her company he 
is like the old negro's fish — so ^^stounk up" that he 
hardly knows himself. Oh, no I These chattering idiots, 
young and old, who love the opposite sex better than 
they do their own, are not to be trusted. 

To love one woman, who is wise and sensible and good, 
above every one else, is noble, commendable and honor- 
able. But to love all women better than you do any 
man, instead of being a virtue is a vice. The world does 
not need another Sardanapulus. One is sufficient. 

On the other hand, the Opposite Old Fool of the 
feminine gender is still worse. May the Lord help the 
man who marries a woman who is fonder of the opposite 
sex than she is of her own. This fondness never termi- 
nates at matrimony, as many weak-minded, sap-headed 
young men suppose, but grows worse, and there is gen- 
erally the devil to pay afterwards, and people who know 
no better wonder why Mr. A or Mr. B looks so wrinkled 
and careworn. We never knew an instance of a man who 
loved women better than he did men, who ever made a 
good husband, or a woman who loved men more than 
she did her own sex, who ever made a good wife. Such 



113 - 

cattle' are not built that way. A true man loves a real 
womanly woman. A true woman loves a real manly 
man. Such fools as the Opposite Old Fool are much 
more numerous than most people imagine, and like all 
the balance of the tribe, they are trying to sail under 
false colors. For instance, how often do we hear that 
"Mr. So-and-so is a great ladies' man?" Nine times in 
every ten when we hear it we feel sorry for the ladies, 
for we are well aware what suffering is in store for them 
should any one of them ever be foolish enough to marry 
him. Such a man hardly ever has any heart, and gen- 
erally regards his wife as the poorest selection he could 
have made, and always looks upon her more as a captive 
thon a conqueror. 

But the dear, delightful little fools will not listen to 
us, and will move heaven and earth to catch one of the 
Opposite Old Fools, and when they have caught him, 
will find that he is like the Irishman's horse, which had 
but two faults — hard to catch and of no account when 
caught. 

CHAPTER XI. 

THE WOMEN-HATIKG OLD FOOLS. 

Strange as it may seem there is very little difference 
in kind between love and hate : in essence they are the 
very same. We love people without being able to assign 
any proper reason for so doing, and we too often hate 
them in the same indefinite way. It is a well-known 
chemical fact, familiar to every dairy-maid in the coun- 
try, that milk or cream which was sweet before a thun- 
der shower, becomes sour immediately afterwards. Some 



114 

change in the mind of man must be kindred to this, for 
hate is only love turned sour. This explains the seem- 
ing paradox that we so often witness, of people loving 
each other so passionately one year and hating each 
other so vehemently the next. For this very reason old 
people have their misgivings concerning newly-married 
couples who are too fond of each other at first. They 
know what usually follows, for it is said that the man 
who is so fond of his wife at first that he could eat her 
up, as a usual thing wishes a few years afterwards that 
he had done so. 

Having laid these facts before the reader as a prelim- 
inary, we as well as himself, are both better able to esti- 
mate the subject of the chapter, The Woman-Hating 
Old Fool, at his true value. In spite of all his sarcasm 
and jibes concerning the " fair sex," we know the old 
rascal at one time was her veriest slave, danced attend- 
ance upon her and ransacked the pages of every senti- 
mental poet to cull verses expressive of her beauty and 
his own deathless love. Now look at the poor old goose, 
gloating over the effusions he has committed to memory 
from some sour old misanthrope of a writer, who has 
had an experience similar to his own, or who, in other 
words, like himself, has been sat down upon, and that 
heavily. But there is no doubt that the Old Fool hates 
them sincerely. He once loved them with all his soul. 
That explains it. 

But the most amusing part of the whole subject lies 
in the fact that the Woman-Hating Old Fool thinks he 
understands female human nature thoroughly, when the 
wisest men who have ever lived have one and all given 
it up as a conundrum past finding out. But, like the 
balance of his brethren, he knows it all. 



115 

Now, I would not have my readers imagine for one 
moment that the woman-hater is always a single man. 
In fact, the reverse is nearly always true, sad as it may 
appear, and in nearly every case the old lascal of a ben- 
edict was the most affectionate creature going for the 
first few years of married life. But finding his wife has 
a will of her own as well as he has, and as he cannot at 
all times have his own \\ay, he finally concludes that all 
women are fools, more or less, and that he has gotten the 
most complete specimen in the whole lot. The old goose 
never seems to consider the fact that when he so thinks 
and says that it is a reflection upon himself, for if he 
had any sense himself he certainly put it to a very poor 
use in selecting the biggest fool in the world for a wife. 
In the course of time he begins to let his wife know his 
opinion of her, and from that time until he is a widower 
he '' makes no bones '^ in including the whcle sex in the 
same category. He will not even allow her to share in 
any of the honors that may fall to his lot as an Ameri- 
can citizen, as the following incident will show. 

On one occasion, one of these Women-Hating Old 
Eools went to a militia muster, where he was elected to 
the rank of corporal. Returning home highly elated with 
this new distinction, he found his wife and his affection- 
ate mother-in-law with the rest of the family seated at 
the supper table. Upon informing them of his good for- 
tune, his poor wife timidly inquired, " Old man, ain't I 
corporal too?" " No," said he, "you are the same blamed 
old fool you always were." 

Anybody in the world ought to be able to decide who 
was the greater fool of the two in this case. Any man 
who has no more sense than to call his wife a " blamed 
old fool " in the presence of his mother-in-law should be 



116 

sent to the Legislature, or to the lunatic asylum without 
running the county to the expense of an election or a- 
committee of inquirendo de lunatico. The next chapter 
will however show that the Woman-Hating Old Fool has 
one mitigating circumstance in his favor in the person 
of the Man-Hating Old Fool. 

CHAPTER XII. 

THE MAN-HATING OLD FOOL. 

There are two ways, figuratively speaking, by which 
men's toes may be trod upon — the one unintentional;, 
the other premeditated and with malice aforethought. 
It has been said of genius that it always makes a noise 
in the world. And, it may be added that genius always^ 
though unintentionally, treads upon some one's toes. 
We mean by this to say that it is the office of genius to 
create, and in creating you always run counter to some 
one's prejudices, which is equivalent to treading upon 
some one's toes. Life is a battle, and so long as the 
fight continues we may expect a list of casualties greater 
or less. Consequently, genius has a right to wage war 
upon pre-conceived follies, and should the fools thrust 
their pedal extremities in the way, or even not take them 
out of the way, as for that matter, if they get them 
mashed they have no one to blame but themselves. 

But as we have already said this, on the part of 
genius, is purely unintentional. There is a class of Old 
Fools, however, both male and female, whose sole occu- 
pation and seeming delight is to give others all the pain 
and all the trouble they possibly can. They profess to- 
be perfectly candid in all they say and do, and when in 
the presence of such people and a witness of their petty 



117 

spites and meanness, we can scarce refrain from exclaim- 
ing about Candour as did Madam Roland about Liberty. 
Oh Candour! How many crimes are committed in thy 
name. In the august name of Candour, one of these 
spiteful old scoundrels or jealous old hags will mar the 
pleasure of a whole company. Let some gentleman ad- 
vance the idea that a certain young man in the neighbor- 
hood is a promising one, aud this base creature will at 
once remark: "If you knew him as well as I do, you would 
not say so." Or let a young lady speak in commenda- 
tory terms of some friend of hers, and the female hag 
will at once cut her short by saying loud enough to be 
heard all over the room: "Silly Gosling! When she 
has seen as much of the world as I have she will talk in 
quite another key." Now it goes withv)ut saying that 
the world has seen as much of them as they have of the 
world, and has pretty much the same opinion of these 
Old Fools as they have of it. "Verily, I say iinto you, 
they have their reward," is not a threat but a fact, and 
a most distressing one it would be and a most wholesome 
one too, if it were possible for the Man-Hatiiig Old Fool 
to realize it. 

But no. They have a mission on earth to perform, 
they imagine, and have long since persuaded themselves 
as to what that mission is — to rail at mankind. Some- 
times, however, the disease brings its own punishment 
in this life, for they dote, if not gloat upon their scorn 
of mankind until they withdraw from it and become 
hermits. The chief reason for doing this is based on the 
idea that by so doing they show their contempt for their 
species. Now this is a game that both can play at, and 
we have never known an instance where mankind did 
not sooner forget them" than they did mankind. If the 



118 



poof old fool only had sense enough to know it, the 
world congratulates itself when he ceases altogether to 
appear in public, in having gotten rid of a great nui- 
sance. 

As for ourselves, while there may possibly be a great 
deal of poetry in renouncing the world after this fashion, 
we have always inclined to the opinion that there is more 
meanness at the bottom of it all than poetry or goodness 
either. 

Should one of these long-haired, acorn-eating old 
scamps ever encounter in his lonely rambles that em- 
bodiment of the most ideal happiness to be found on 
this earth — a girl or a boy, how it delights the old fraud 
to lure the child to rest upon his knee, and as he crushes 
the heaven in his or her young heart by his recitals of 
the meanness of mankind, the eye of the old wretch 
glows with the fires of perdition itself. 

Quite frequently this Man-Hating Old Fool calls him- 
self or herself a Christian. How any man or woman 
who ever saw a real Christian, read a line in the Word 
of God, or ever felt the love of God shed abroad in his 
heart, and yet substitutes hate for love in his creed 
could imagine they were Christlttns is past comprehen- 
sion, except upon our theory, that they are the Same Old 
Fools along with the rest, knowing it all and hence 
listening to nobody. 

We did intend speaking of the Man-Hating Old Fool 
of a woman, but when we came to that branch of the 
subject we could not find a solitary one of the fair sex 
who did not like some man better than she did the rest. 
Hence her omission from the category of Man-Hating 
Old Fools. 



119 
CHAPTER XIII. 

THE MATHEMATICAL OLD FOOL. 

The Mathematical Old Fool is of a piece with the 
rest. Like all the balance in his particular field, he 
knows it all. AVhile not quite so numerous as the rest, 
yet every neighborhood, we dare say, in the whole world 
contains one or two fully developed specimens. He 
always contrives in every company in which he may 
chance to be to make the mathematics of his presence 
felt. As a general rule he knows about as much about 
the noble science of mathematics as an average politician 
about statesmanship. H« is nearly always deficient even 
in common sense, but has a wonderful knack for conun- 
drums and usually carries a greasy wallet chock full of 
problems, (" sums " he calls them) concerning the meas- 
urement of lumber, the height of church steeples and 
that old worm eaten "chestnut" of a hound in pursuit 
of a hare, and the time required to catch it. 

We have already said he hardly has enough common 
sense to go into the house when it rains. And yet he 
contrives to impress other fools with the idea that New- 
ton was not a "patching "to him. The greatest Old 
Mathematical Fool we ever knew lived in Virginia. 
Without putting pencil to paper, he could solve in his 
head the most difficult problems. And yet he not only 
knew nothing of the science of numbers, but did not 
even have sense enough to charge anything for labor- 
ing in the fields along with a gang of well-paid 
negroes. Something to eat and an old hat or coat would 
fully satisfy him. But he bordered so near to the natu- 



120 

ral-born fool that he is hardly in the line of illustrating 
the genuine Mathematical Old Fool. This specimen is 
usually the product of circumstances, and overweening 
self-conceit, which his foolish parents mistook for ambi- 
tion in his youth, and ruined him in the start. 

Some years ago the writer of these sketches was en- 
gaged in school teaching. One fine morning there rode 
up to the school house door a gentleman about forty 
five years of age, bringing his son about ten years old to 
have him "entered" at school. Dismounting, he signi- 
fied to the teacher that he wished to see liim privately 
for a few moments. Here he confided to him the infor- 
mation that his son was a great mathematical genius, 
and that he wished us, as far as lay in our power, to 
curb him in that direction and push him in Latin as 
much as possible. We agreed to do so. When his father 
had departed we called him up. A sensation of having 
before us an embryonic Xewton, Kepler or Laplace stole 
over us. We felt all the responsibilities of directing a 
genius. We took up his books, among the rest Davies' 
Common School Arithmetic. We asked him how far he 
had progressed in it. He said, " a long ways." We 
asked him had he gotten to the Eule of Three. " I've 
gone further than that sir," he replied, " I've ciphered 
to the Rule of Eight." We informed him he was ahead 
of his teacher, but would he be so kind as to show us 
the Rule of Eight? The little genius took his arithme- 
tic, and turning backward until he struck long division, 
and pointing to eight special rules as a complement to 
the general one, exclaimed triumphantly, " There it is 
sir !" We were floored. Explanation was a mere waste 
of words. 

But oh, the trouble that little mathematical genius 



121 



gave lis. He was the dullest boy in figures in the whole 
school. There was no need of "reining him in." Oh, 
no. We did our best to "rein him out" and failed. 

From just such material as this boy comes most of 
our Mathematical Old Fools. Ten to one he is poking 
around now with his pocket-book full of conundrums, 
astonishing the natives of his native heath by his solu- 
tions. The Mathematical Old Fool has one trick how- 
ever, which is his " winning card." He always gets the 
drop on you by proposing his conundrums first. What 
an insufferable old bore, and what a parody on a noble 
science he is to be sure. 

CHAPTER XIV. 

THE FINANCIAL OLD FOOL. 

Some men are born fools, some achieve foolishness 
and some have foolishness thrust upon them. To one 
or the other of these classes the Financial Old Fools, 
both great and small, all belong. Notwithstanding that 
in all the world's history you may count the number of 
born financiers on the fingers of your right hand, still 
every neighborhood and hamlet in these United States 
has its financial "genuses," each with a system of his 
own to restore the public credit, and calculated to bring 
untold prosperity to the American people. Although 
they have no credit of their own, not enough even to 
get a bushel of meal or a pint of pine top on "tick" at 
the home grocery, they all know how to deal with the 
disordered finances of a great nation. Singular isn't it? 
But we said above that some achieve foolishness and 
some have foolishness thrust upon them. 

To this class belong the banking fraternity. And yet 



122 

truth to say no one is so ignorant of finance as a banker. 
Accustomed all his life to taking a microscopic view of 
money, calculating to a hair the petty amounts of inter- 
est and discount, he becomes a mere financial automaton, 
incapable of generalization. Any fool can dig a ditch, 
but it requires an engineering genius to fertilize a coun- 
try by irrigation. Taught suspicion from the time he 
was a bank runner, he becomes so narrowed by the time 
he is forty years old that a broad idea would split his 
head open. And yet this is the Old Fool who is sup- 
posed to know everything of finance. 

A hen probably knows how many chickens she hatches 
out, but has no idea whatever how many it will take to 
supply the market, and so Financial Old Fool Number 
One knows how great a dividend he will be able to de- 
clare at the specified time. And to make the dividend 
as large as possible is the summit of his ambition. Be- 
cause he does this by a skillful use of other people's 
money, furnished him almost free of charge, he gets the 
"big head," financially, and allows his favorites at the 
bank who are bought up with "renewed notes" to call 
him the Napoleon of Finance. Shades of Bonaparte I 
Is it not a fact that of Americans three greatest finan- 
financiers, we might say, three only financiers, only one 
was a banker — Kobert Morris, while the other two, Ham- 
ilton and Sherman, were never behind a bank counter 
in their lives. And Tet in the face of all history bank- 
ers now-a days are Avorshiped as masters of finance. 
Every railway engineer knows how to operate an engine, 
whether it is a good one or a bad one, knows what parts 
are to be oiled, how to start it as well as stop it, and yet 
not one in ten thousand could invent one. Any numb- 
scull can use money, invest it and reap returns, but only 



123 



a financial genius can regulate the currency of a whole 
country. 

The next consideration is the Financial Old Fool tvho 
knows better, but has his foolishness thrust upon upon 
him. He is generally a politician, and while believing 
in his inmost soul that the people are wrong on the fi- 
nancial question, yet as that which he disbelieves in is 
so popular, he swallows his convictions and essays the 
role of leader among financial fools. Sometimes, how- 
ever, he inherits the dollars of his "daddy," who had 
real financial ability, and the young Financial Fool steps 
into the old man's shoes, and comes full-fledged like 
Minerva. His foolishness is thrust upon him like the 
logic of a situation. 

The last Financial Old Fool is the one born so. Hav- 
ing, however, purposely refrained in this veracious his- 
tory from dealing with natural born fools, we will only 
say of the born Financial Old Fool that he always de- 
velops into a complete miser in after life, whose only re- 
gret was the time lost from making money while he was 
at his mother's breast and in trying to learn how to walk. 
And yet there are other fools who think he is a great 
financial genius, and all because lie has cheated his back 
out of decent clothing and his belly out of civilized food 
to make a little money. Poor Humanity I 



PART FIFTH 



CHAPTER I. 

THE POLITICAL OLD FOOLS. 

In keeping with the plan of this book, which Avas to 
classify each Old Fool with the department to which he 
naturally belonged, we now enter another and wider field 
than any perhaps we have hitherto done. The reasons 
for its being the most extensive is quite obvious, for 
there is no subject which hag engaged and still engages 
more men than politics. It has been a perplexing prob- 
lem in all ages, and will still continue to be so in the 
ages to come. And the reasons for this are quite obvious 
also, for the same Old Fool has been and ever Avill be 
one of its concomitants, and his malign influence has 
ever been at work Especially is he powerful in a repub- 
lic like ours, whose theory, "the majority must rule," 
gives him unlimited, if not undisputed leadership, as it 
is well known the fools are always in the majority, 
and they generally select as their leader the greatest one 
in the whole lot, which is perfectly natural as well as 
constitutional. 

This being the true state of the case, as might have 
been expected, the Same Old Fool would appear here in 
all his glory. And so he does. He has assumed so many 
aliases that it is often difficult to recosfnize him. But 



125 



as has been said, that when you scratch a Russian you 
will find a Tartar, so it may be said that under whatever 
guise the Political Old Fool may appear, when you come 
to analyze him you will find him the Same Old Fool 
after all, and differing in no essential particulars from 
the universal tribe. This then is the duty before us, 
and we will nOw call your attention to him. 

CHAPTER II. 

THE INDEPE:N^DEi;rT OLD FOOL. 

This specimen of the universal tribe, like all the rest 
of his brethren, not only knows it all, but even* ventures 
a bowshot beyond that amazing limit of human great- 
ness and assumes that he is the best of all. He professes 
to believe that all the old parties are in error and their 
methods so corrupt that such a wise and self-respecting 
citizen as himself can neither get the consent of his 
mind nor the sacrifice of his personal self-respect to 
affiliate with them He has no desire for office (oh, no) 
but is entirely moved by patriotic considerations to im- 
molate such a spotless victim as himself upon the politi- 
cal altar. He has a perfect horror of political conven- 
tions, especially when he is in a minority, and hates a 
duly nominated candidate worse than the Devil does 
holy water. He will stand on no platform except his 
own, which is generally no broader than a fence-rail at 
first, but which he usually forsakes when he ascertains 
which is the winning side. Of the birds of the forest 
he much resembles the owl in his assumption of pro- 
found wisdom, and like him does his most effective 
work in the dark, after having hooted loudly at the 
political henroost which he designs to rob. 



126 

He sometimes succeed in his deceptions and is elected. 
But he has hardly gotten warm in his seat before he sells 
out to the higest bidder, in order to obtain the empty 
honor of a chairmanship in some committee or else the 
control of the patronage of his district. Claiming to 
represent the people, and not a party, as soon as he 
betrays his constituents by throwing off the mask, like 
all true renegades, he becomes a bitterer enemy than a 
professed partisan. 

When he is too honest to do this, he is compelled to 
flock to himself in either Legislative or Congressional 
halls and has, in consequence, about as much influence 
in shaping legislation as a Hottentot would in the Brit- 
ish parliament. Whatever weight he has is entirely cor- 
poreal, and the same number of pounds of beef or pork 
contributed by his district to the support of Congress or 
the Legislature would do more good, as a legislator 
could eat that, while he, even were he eatable, is gener- 
ally so tough that it would require a whole season to 
make him tender enough to be devoured. In order to 
succeed he frequently subsidizes some newspaper already 
on its last legs, pays the poor devil of a scribe, who 
descants upon the beauties of non-partisan politics, just 
money enough to keep his concern from going to pieces 
until after the election. Should he succeed, the shaky 
concern aforesaid becomes his organ and loads its 
columns down with wooden speeches, that never had a 
listener in Congress, and which are destined to have no 
readers at home. 

Such is the Lidependent Old Fool at home and abroad, 
a misnomer and a nuisance, and only to be compared in 
influence and characteristics to the Partisan Old Fool, 
who comes next. 



127 



CHAPTER III. 

THE STEICTLY PARTISAN^ OLD FOOL. 

Rightly applied there is no word in the English lan- 
guage which conveys a more noble idea than the^word 
Fealty. Taken in connection with its synonym Loyalty, 
they constitute the main pillars on which the temples of 
Honor, Love and Friendship stand. 

Apart from this honorable connection, however, no 
other two words imply gi eater debasement of thought 
and association. Yet, even in their perversion, by asso- 
ciation with evil company they still retain, like Satan in 
Paradise Lost, sad evidences of former greatness and 
glory. For instance, there is said to be honor among 
thieves, honor here being synonymous with Loyalty and 
Fealty, and the word Honor in this connection is recog- 
nized at once as being in the worst company imagin- 
able. 

All evil, as we take it, is only the perversion of some 
good, and so when theologasters speak of the origin of 
evil, they are out of their reckoning, unless the correlated 
idea of the creation of good is implied. There is then 
no such thing as the creation of evil, unless the Persian 
theory of devil creators is admitted. For to say that 
God created all things and to say that he is infinitely 
good and yet to say he is the author of something not 
good is a flat contradiction, in short, an utter absurdity. 
But this by the way. We are not engaged in writing a 
theological or metaphysical treatise. Do not be alarmed. 
We do not intend to poach upon another man's preserves 
nor to handle straw from which the wheat has been 
threshed for a thousand years. We have been led into 



128 

this train of thought in order to give you a proper defi- 
nition of a very common and yet very peculiar kind of 
an Old Fool, to-wit, the Strictly Partisan Old Fool. 

Correctly speaking, the Strictly Partisan Old Fool 
occupies the same position in politics as the Bigoted Old 
Fool does in the church. As the latter not only knows 
his particular sect is right but also that yours is wrong, 
so the Strictly Partisan Old Fool is so fully persuaded 
that his own political party is right that he cannot con- 
ceive that yours has a right to exist, much less to pre- 
vail. In consequence of this feeling on his part, he 
has become a political Jesuit, being fully convinced 
that the ends justify the means in all cases. He has no 
sciuples against creating a political inquisition within 
the ranks of his own party, where men, whose convictions 
coincide with his in the main, and yet deny or oppose 
resolutions which they deem hurtful to the party, shall 
be put upon the rack and tortured out of their heresies. 
But some of his apologists will say, " The Old Fool 
means well." The deuce he does. So, no doubt, did the 
Duke of Alva, so no doubt did Catherina de Medicis. 
Bosh ! The idea of one's meaning well while doing the 
devil's work ! 

Sometimes the Strictly Partisan Old Fool edits the 
organ of his party, and when he does, woe to the luckless 
knight of the inkhorn who takes a milder view or to the 
rash man who protests against his course. If they are 
not whipped in or kicked out they are made of sterner 
stuff than men usually are. Sometimes a non-partisan 
organization exists in his district, and when such is the 
case the amount of friendly advice given him by the 
Strictly Partisan Old Fool not to sacrifice their great 
organization by meddling with politics is phenomenal. 



129 

He means of course, not to meddle with his politics, for 
just as soon as he sees it disposed to oppose the politics 
of the other party he changes his tune, and grows very- 
complimentary indeed touching the organization in ques- 
tion. 

This is a great world we live in aud no doubt the 
Strictly Partisan Old Fool has his uses, one of which is 
to point a moral and adorn a tale. For instance, it has 
been truly said that prosperity makes friends but adver- 
sity tries them. Then it is that when the political 
party to which the Strictly Partisan Old Fool be- 
longs is in the ascendancy he is the " boss, " but 
when adversity comes there are none so poor as to 
do him reverence. This course also is an illustration of 
the truth of Scripture, which says, that what a man sow- 
eth that shall he also reap, and inasmuch as he sows 
proscription he always reaps it sooner or later. 

To analyze the constituent elements of a Strictly Par- 
tisan Old Fool is to discover an amount of conceit and 
meanness that is simply colossal. To think that in a 
supposedly free country, where every man has an inalien- 
able right to his own opinion, there could exist one 
man or set of men, who shall dictate what another man 
or set of men shall choose to entertain in regard to the 
best course to be pursued for the public welfare, is one 
of the most amazing propositions of the age. When we 
further consider that this man or set of men who thus 
dictate are very frequen.ly a set of political as well as 
business blockheads, it is enough to make one lose his 
breath with sheer astonishment, to say nothing of indig- 
nation. But the idea is to excruciating to pursue it fur- 
ther, and we drop it as well as the subject that called it 
forth. 



PART SIXTH. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE SECTIONAL OLD FOOLS. 

Geographically the United States is divided into five 
great sections : The Eastern, Central, Southern and 
Pacific. Each of these subdivisions has products pecu- 
liar to itself. The Eastern, one class of Old Fools, the 
Central, another and so on with all the rest. As we 
are impartial on nothing we shall deal with them in the 
order in which they occur. The first Sectional Old 
Fool then to which we invite your attention is the New 
England Old Fool. 

The first significant appearance of this Old Fool oc- 
curs in Jewish history about 1900 hundred years ago. 
At that time he was called a Pharisee. He was then as 
now, a very great stickler for the observance to the letter 
of the moral law, although he "made no bones whatever 
of violating its spirit. The best read man of his time, 
he was the most narrow. His favorite text was, "The 
earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof," to which 
he added the following post-script: We are the "Lord's, 
therefore the earth and its fullness are ours." Traces 
of this remarkable disposition are still extant in the 
modern edition for they still want "the earth." 

Having been overwhelmed for the time being he dis- 
appeared as a ruling force in society for over sixteen 



131 

hundred years. But in 1640 he again came to the sur- 
face, this time in England. The same traits which 
characterized his ajicestors in the remote past again 
manifested themselves in pristine vigor. As before, they 
insisted on the observance of the moral law to the letter, 
however much they may have violated its spirit. They 
prescribed certain rules for the happiness of mankind, 
and if one refused to enjoy himself that way he was 
made to do so or suffer the penalty. Like their ancestors 
they claimed "the earth," and for a season took posses- 
sion of it. But at last having been dislodged in Eng- 
England, they sought refuge in the wilds of North 
America. Tbey came hither in the dead of winter, and 
their posterity seem never to have rt covered from the 
coldness of their ancestors. They alleged as the reason 
of their coming hither that they desired to worship God 
according to the dictates of their own consciences. This 
was doubtless correct, and as no one except themselves 
was supposed to possess such a luxury, they proposed to 
furnish mankind with one and then of course dictate as 
to the manner of its use. As a result of this we see one 
of their number, Roger Williams, who happened to have 
brought his over the ocean, leaving them in the dead of 
winter to make his abode with the Indians. The Red 
man, although a savage, was maguaminus enough to 
allow him religious liberty. As the country became 
more settled, the New England Old Fool became more 
potential in its affairs. He knew it all, and hence ac- 
cording to his idea, the poor Indian who would not em- 
brace Christianity and give up his lands for a string of 
beads or a tin whistle was exterminated. 

In fact, the most horrible idea the New England Old 
Fool ever had of Hell was that it was a place where 
every one was compelh d to attend to his own business. 



132 

The subsequent career of the New England Old Fool 
is best told in a poem written in Hudibrastic style which 
we read several years ago, and as it is germane to the 
subject now under consideration, we give it in full: 



"THE ELEPHANT.' 



AN HISTORICAL SKETCH. 



li^ TWO PARTS. 



Part First. 

About two hundred years ago, 

As old colonial records show, 

There sprung in these remoter ages. 

One of the wisest of the sages. 

Who ever at a venture drew 

A plan of State or kingdom new. 

Yet ere his story must be told, 

Some patent truths shoCild be unroll'd. 

Which greatly will elucidate 

His policy as to the State. 

This first, then, must be borne in mind, 

By those, who wish to serve mankind. 

That no invention can compete 

With those producing bread aud meat. 

In ev'ry age, as well as this. 

One's rations never came amiss ; 

E'en mighty Jupiter, is said 

On Hybla's honey to have fed. 

Each heathen god, all readers know, 

Were famous all for " eating crow," 



133 

'Nov should one for a moment think 

Oreat Csesar did not eat and drink, 

And be assur'd he did not slight 

His own imperial appetite; 

And hist'ry tells us Cicero, 

Soon after Pompey's overthrow. 

Ate greedily " Csesarian crow." 

In short, we've not a grain of doubt. 

Could all the facts be written out. 

That empires rise or " go to rot " 

According as they are fed or not. 

^N'or science, letters, skill or learning 

One's stomach ever kept from yearning, 

Unless, embracing in their plan, 

A way to soothe the inner man. 

This organ empty will excite 

The poet to his highest flight. 

Lend eloquence to lips all mute 

Before, of either man or brute, 

Whilst wit and wi.ne, all mortals know. 

Invariably together flow. 

But to return : our hero knew, 

In street parlance, a thing or two ; 

That fame was only a gewgaw 

To one who has an empty maw, 

Tho' it should bear one to the skies," 

Yet none so bent to win the prize 

As set out with an empty belly 

To run the risk of cake and jelly. 

And so a sudden change was wrought 

In all our statesman's train of thought; 

No more to be a doctrinaire 

To point a moral, split a hair ; 

Another thought supplied him food 



134 

Than hero of his neighborhood. 

By some contrivance he had found 

The earth, not square, but nearly round. 

Was never known to try to prove 

By Scripture that " The Sun Do Move." 

He talked about antipodes 

Because he thought, no doubt, that these 

High-sounding words would make belief 

Of all wise men he w^as the chief. 

From one extreme into another 

He ran, since he could run no further. 

Political economy 

His next employment, but he 

No treatise ever read or saw. 

But intuition gave him law. 

Instead of books he bore instead 

" The Wealth of Nations" in his head. 

This lead him into speculation 

Both for himself and for the nation, 

And sooth to suy, this latter^spirit 

His pushing offspring all inherit; 

Prefer to manage all affairs 

Except their own, aye run on shares 

The world itself, provided they, 

In their own parlance, " make it pay !" 

A Problem. 

Our Solon saw, with much distress. 
The land a howling wilderness. 
Not even mighty Hercules, 
Could clear the land of monster trees, 
And drag them off and make it fit 
For cultivation ; so his wit 



135 

Was set to work to hatch a way 
To have it done, and make it pay. 
Erelong he hit upon a plan, 
(In keeping with the very man). 
To solve a problem which just now 
Had wrinkles wrought upon his brow. 
This was the plan he'd recommend 
In working the desired end: 
By putting powder 'neath their trunks, 
And blowing them at once to chunks. 
So like all other innovators. 
He tried the first his apparatus. 
A white oak large before his door. 
Whose height was sixty feet or more. 
Whose girth when measured at its base 
Some twenty feet or more of space 
Oontriv'd to hide; we are minute 
On points admitting of dispute. 
Beneath this tree he dug a hole, 
And therein did a barrel roll, 
With powder full, enough to blow 
The forest king to Jericho. 
Then pours his fuse along the ground, 
Applies a match and makes a bound 
Within his hut and shuts the door, 
Stops up his ears and waits the roar. 

As if two worlds had knocked together. 
With fell design to crush each other. 
Was that report, which seemed to shake 
The pillars of this globe opaque. 
One limb was blown against the door. 
And knocked him sprawling on the floor; 
Another on his roof was thrown 



136 



And madly kick'd his chimney down. 

The statesman scrambled out, — he saw 

A scene of ruin and of awe, 

For all the trees, for yards around. 

Were pil'd, or scattered on the ground. 

A week it took him, labor hard. 

To get the rubbish from the yard ; 

And then, it took a month or more 

To get his '^hicm" as 'twas before. 

As to the plan of felling trees. 

One would have thought he'd stop with these; 

Yet ere he had the trial made, 

A mightier one posses'd his head. 

Thus, genius never can be spent. 

Save thro' its own, its native bent, 

Tho' wa<-er never runs up hill, 

Yet genius does, and ever will ; 

One yields to force of nature blind, 

The other to the laws of mind, 

For genius craves and must inherit 

The higher altitudes of spirit. 

The New Idea. 

On Afric's coast he had been told. 

That "elephants" were bought with gold. 

Whose trunks alone contain'd the key 

To all of labor's mystery : 

Yet as his wealth would not suffice 

To purchase one, an old device 

He hit upon, co-operation, 

The beau-ideal of his nation. 

And truth to say, they all agreed 

That elephants would serve their need. 



137 

So he was authorized to buy 
Enough for all the colony. 
At once he hasten'd to the coast, 
Where Dutchmen traders frequent most, 
And made at once a stipulation 
For elephants for all the nation. 
Now, whilst the trader seeks the coast 
Of Africa, at home they boast, 
"How soon the trees will disappear 
When we receive the cargo here ;" 
They dreamed the elephantine snout 
Could pull up trees and drag them out. 

At length the mighty cargo came 

Of elephants, the wild and tame. 

It seem'd at first the scheme would pay, 

Experience drove such hopes away; 

The climate was too cold and bleak, 

The elephants grew lean and weak. 

What should they do? not send them back 

To roam again their native track. 

On, no, that scheme would never pay, 

Appear however good it may. 

Besides, it would not suit a school 

Where ev'ry good man's thought a fool. 

Necessity. 

"Necessity can have no law," 
Was uttered by some luckless "saw," 
Who found himself within a place 
Which had no outlet but disgrace. 
And us'd it as a valid plea. 
To get out of his villainy. 



138 



If right and wrong can have a meaning, 

If they are but the idle gleaning 

Of men whose smooth and easy fate 

Was never put to such a strait, 

Then may we use it in the day — 

When honesty has ceas'd to pay. 

Some witty fellow tells ns, too, 

(We only wonder how he knew,) 

She is the mother of invention. 

And other things we may not mention. 

Well, if a time had ever been, 

That called for all the wit of men. 

That time was this, to free the nation 

From this animal creation. 

The good philosopher was dead 

Who put this notion in their head, 

And if he now had been about. 

Would found that time had pnt it out. 

But his descendants did inherit 

The whole of his inventive spirit. 

And quickly did they turn about 

And find a way to get them out. 

They shipped them southward "in a trice,' 

And sold them off at a good price. 

AVhat next? for verily it seems 

Their meat and drink consist in schemes 

Of self-advancement, while pretending 

Another's rights to be defending. 

Turn God, if possible to pelf. 

And traffic make of Hell itself. 

All this, and many other things 

To notice, the next chapter brings. 



139 
Chapter Seco:n^d. 

It happeD'd in the course of time — 
(Not Pollok's, that is too sublime), 
That all the facts I herein pen 
Were seen and known of living men ; 
For 'tis our purpose in this place 
To deal in facts, nor s ek to trace 
Man's future misery or grace, — 
How he is sav'd or how he's lost. 
But chief concerns that mighty host 
Of elephants, the wild and tame, 
Whicli Ave have said from Afric came. 
But in so doing we must trace 
The darker outlines that deface 
A lineage sprung alone in schism. 
And muddled now with ev'ry "ism" 
That men or devils could invent 
To keep from telling what they meant. 
And so we will reiterate. 
That prior chapter did relate 
To an unique and novel trade 
That Modern Saints and Sinners made. 
In chapter number two we tell 
What to these "elephants" befell 
Within a more congenial place — 
The home of all the dusky race. 
So, therefore, without more ado, 
His hist'ry there is brought to view. 
Know, then, the animal creation. 
Like man, has power of propagation, 
Like him in many other senses. 
Without regard to consequences. 
They, therefore, like the human species, 



140 

In consequence the owners grew 
Immenseley rich, as would ensue 
To all who mind their own affairs, 
Nor say all things, except their prayers. 

Saintly Jealousy. 

Became as numerous as the fishes. 

But still their owners found a way 

To make the dusky creatures "pay;" 

Found him, beside, to be withal. 

Well treated — a good animal. 

The Devil's workshop, it is said, 

Is found in ev'ry idler's head; 

No doubt Old Nick there often dwells. 

And makes a thousand little hells 

Of petty spites and jealousies. 

Of envy at another's ease. 

Indeed, no sore was ever found 

Like that immedicable wound, 

Inflicted when a hated rival 

Contrives to rise by no contrival 

Or help of ours, overleaping 

The bounds we set for his safe-keeping. 

Thus was it, as the sequel shows, 

With those who bought and traded those 

Gigantic animals, which found 

No sustenance on saintly ground. 

An animal, forsooth, till sold 

His value down in dollars told. 

Now found, when others made them pay. 

Their equals almost ev'ry way 

Except in goodness, for the earth 

Trac'd backward to its very birth, 



141 

Thro' countless ages, never knew 
A race so spotless and so true. 

The Philai^thropic Tribe. 

Next came a philanthropic tribe, 
Which beggars language to describe, 
Long, lank and lean, and hollow-eyed, 
Tho' indigestion long had vied 
With death itself, and left within 
An aching void, where bile and sin 
In equal parts contrived to stay 
And keep grim death alone at bay. 
Dyspepsia, too, their minds had seiz'd, 
And both were equally diseas'd. 
Their mental eyelids hung within. 
And not without, and hid the sin 
That others saw, yet they could see 
The mote, the smallest that could be, 
That swam within a brother's eye. 
And rais'd at once a hue and cry. 
As if "the devil were to pay," 
Unless said mote were moved away. 
The beam that ever blurr'd their own 
They ne'er so much as thought upon; 
So great a blindness doth possess 
Believers in self- righteousness, 
That microscopes cannot detect 
A single flaw in God's elect. 
Altho' the Devil in his sleeves, 
While looking thro' the web he weaves, 
Is laughing at them, yet they go 
As if old Mother Earth below 
would not exist another day 
Should Providence take them away. 



142 

They soon began to agitate 
On what they termed "the social state" 
Of those, which on a former day, 
They bargain'd for and sold away. 
They fiU'd the land with wind and rant, 
With stuff and sanctimonious cant, 
About this self-same elephant. 
Meanwhile, the elephant, content, 
Perform'd the task that he was sent. 
And never dream'd the world without 
Was getting into grief about 
Himself; 'twas pity thrown away; 
Oh, no, have they not made it pay ? 

The Elephant Aforetime. 

Oft where the Nile, or Niger flows 
Thro' sunny wastes, and brii^htly throws 
The gleaming sunlight from its Ijreast, 
His memoy, at times, in quest 
Of some near object, deign'd to go. 
But where it was he did not know. 
He saw the dark and dismal day 
When he was seized and brought away 
Across the deep and rolling sea, 
Ne'er seen before by such as he. 
Next of the cold and sterile soil, 
Where first he was inui'd to toil. 
The stinging and relentless snow. 
The bitter, biting winds that blow 
Remorselessly through winters long, 
When even birds refuse to song. 
Now, in a hospitable clime, 
Where all the -^ear was summer-time, 



us 

Where lark and linnet sweetly sung, 
Where field and farm with music rung ; 
Where, when the sun its course had run. 
And all their daily work was done, 
Beneath some tall and stately tree. 
Their keepers sharing in the glee. 
Unto the music of banjo 
They "tripp'd the light fantastic toe." 

The Si:n'ners. 

But best of all, their owners were 

Their keepers, they could love and fear; 

No prating fools who went around 

To fill the earth with empty sound ; 

No vowing that their souls would melt 

With pity they had never felt; 

No turning systems inside out. 

No social surgeon 's mad to flout 

Their placards in the face af men. 

No more commandments than "The Ten ;" 

No civilization that eschews 

All that is good for the refuse 

And dregs of plutocratic snobs, 

Of one who daily wrings and robs 

Ill-got' en gains from sadder slaves 

Than those the nation pets and saves. 

A daring and inpulsUe race. 

Which dreaded but one thing— disgrace. 

By nature prone to ridicule 

The cant of puritanic school. 

Or trash of transcendental fool; 

No cold and philosophic breed. 

Dispensing virtues that they need ; 



144 



No straight-laced ministers, whose shelves 
Preach hell to all except themselves. 

The Saints. 

But volumes it would take to trace 

The humors of the saintly race, 

For since Pere Adam first began 

To people this wide world with man, 

There never has before existed 

A people so perverse and twisted 

With vices, virtues, both so blended, 

Where one began, the other ended. 

No one could tell, and we despair 

Of telling mankind what they are. 

Eed, brown and black, (in chief the latter). 

Seemed mingled in social platter. 

All things in Heaven, earth or hell, 

(If they but serve their purpose well). 

They use without the least dismay. 

Provided, always, that it pay. 

We have been told their first appearance 

Upon this earth was interference 

With things established long ago. 

And which they tried to overthrow. 

But in their turn were driv'n out 

For being rather too devout. 

Their deep abhorrence, too, of witches, 

Of luxury and handsome breeches ; 

Their gloomy love and sour looks, 

Their deep antiphanies to books. 

Save of the heavy solemn kind. 

Which treat of all to hell consign'd, 

Except themselves; their moral law. 



145 



Worse than Egyptian " bricks and straw ; " 

Their solemn, sanctimonious airs, 

Their fondness for the longest prayers ; 

The rueful cant and nasal twang, 

With which they either spoke or sang ; 

Their loud piofession in all places 

To sanctity, the very traces. 

The Devil wrote upon their faces, 

To mark them always as his own, 

No matter where they might have gone. 

Yet all their cunning and conceit 

Can never cover up the cheat. 

For "wooden nutmegs" will betray 

A leaning not to Virtue's way/ 

Philosophers Amo:n"gst the Saints. 

Now came a philosophic race 
With full abilities to trace 
The source of ev'ry ill or good, 
BefalFn mankind since the flood. 
These deep philosophers were giv'n 
To speculate on em'th as Heav'n. 
Saw universal love pervading 
The paths to glory, they were grading ; 
Saw all peoples, kindreds, tongues 
Mix and Nature do no wrongs ; 
Saw all prejudice and passion 
Of natures foreign, in one fashion ; 
Saw white and smutty Hottentot 
Both boiling in a common pot, 
And what one never reads in fable, 
Both eating at a common table ; 
Saw Dutchman and his liehe hier 



146 



Dissolve and part for water clear ; 

Saw Erin and her sons forsake 

Their hate of Britain and partake 

Of British cheer at British boards, 

And even toast the House of Lords ; 

Saw valet and her queenly "marm" 

In public, walking arm in arm ; 

Saw mistress and her slutty maid. 

The genius and the worthless jade 

All on a level and a grade 

Hence, Gentle Header, do not doubt 

There's aught impossible, without 

Some sudden freak shall mar the plan, 

They'll prove that man is more than man, 

And that ere long the brute creation 

Will occupy your former station. 

Conclusion. 

'Tis well to recapitulate 
At times, and thus more clearly state 
What has been written once before. 
For explanation's sake, no more, 
Or else the story will be stale. 
And " tedious as a twice-told tale." 
Be it remembered then, the trade 
The Modern Saints with Sinners made. 
Concerning elephants, wherein 
The Saint's abhorrence of the sin 
Of selling those which later day 
They found their equals ev'ry way 
Does not appear; but now began 
A war of words that puzzled man. 
For, strange as it may seem, they strove 



147 



By e\'ry argument to prove 

That lines alone of latitude 

Did separate the bad from good, 

And that the Devil never strolled 

In countries where the climate's cold ; 

The modern earthly paradise 

Were hedg'd about with snow and ice ; 

Frost-bitten piety the sort, 

Admitting one to Heaven's Court 

Or frozen goodliness alone, 

Were in demand around the throne: 

That sin and shame are never found 

Where snow and ice and frost abound ; 

That wickedness has its retreat 

Alone in climes of warmth and heat ; 

That each and every age displays 

Some vice peculiar to its days 

They did admit, but 'twas before 

Their race had trod the earthly floor, 

That men would cheat and lie and steal 

And cloak it with religious zeal ; 

That even Quakers had been maim'd 

Whipt at cart's tails when they nam'd 

Religious freedom, Williams sent 

Thro' pathless woods in banishment 

To find in hearts of savage chiefs 

A home and solace for his griefs. 

Caligula drive his furious steeds 

Thro' streets where his near kinsman bleeds; 

Sylla and Marius proscribe 

Rome's noblest for the meanest bribe ; 

Robespierre for the horrid store 

That he had shed of human gore 



148 

Might find forgiveness for those crimes 
Defenseless even in those times, 
But pardon never will they grant 
To one who own'd an elephant. 

A nos 7)iouto7is, we now return 

Where heroes for the conflict burn 

Each lesser saint to greater bow'd, 

Horse, foot, dragoons, a motley crowd, 

Until Utopia became 

Confusion worse than a Bedlam. 

Ye gods ! how wind and thunder roll'd 

From such as lately bought and sold, 

With what pathetic frenzy told. 

How " elephants " from day to day 

In sighs and tears groaned life away. 

At times the saintly billingsgate 

Was measureless, invoking fate. 

And all the furies out of hell 

To come at once the curse to quell : 

Pronounc'd the "Writ" that gave them breath, 

" A league and covenant with death," 

And leaving all the means they saw, 

Began to preach the " Higher Law," 

Tho' it should ruin fabric rear'd 

By patriots whom the world rever'd. 

For that alone which time would damn 

Without recourse to cant or sham, 

Great souls there were on either side. 

Who sought to stem the dreadful tide, 

One who in prophetic awe. 

His country's desolation saw ; 

He warn'd them of their coming fate, 



149 

His sole reward — his coimtry's hate.* 
Another prayed the beauteous Sun, 
AVhose beams he last might gaze upon, 
Might never shine upon a State 
Drench'd in fraternal blood, but fate 
Took his capacious soul away 
Before the horrors of that day.* 

It came, alas, the dreadful day, 
A million homes in mourning lay. 
As fire and. sword in fury swept 
O'er fields that late with harvests slept. 
And sow'd the earth, above, beneath, 
With Hell's own idea, dragons' teeth. 
"Truth crushed to earth will rise again," 
Will rise superior ty her pain, 
The nations of the earth will know 
Who struck the fratricidal blow 
When heroes of the Blue and Gray 
Shall each to each due homage pay. 
And scorn with all their martial souls 
The cowards base and venal ghouls. 
Who shunned the conflict they had bred. 
And lived but to malign the dead. 
'Tis done, the elephant is free. 
His master slave instead of he. 

*Calhoun. 
*Webster. 



150 



CHAPTER III. 

THE CEI^TRAL OLD FOOL. 

Shakspeare says some men are born great, some achieve 
greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them. 
In like manner, some men are born fools, some become 
fools, and some have foolishness thrust upon them. The 
Central Old Fool belongs to the latter category. By vir- 
tue of commercial situation, his section became the finan- 
cial center of the Union. In consequence of this the 
Central Old Fool soon distanced in a material sense the 
other less favored sections of the country. As a result 
of this combination of circumstances in his favor, and 
with which he had no more to do than he did in the 
creation of the globe, he became a first-class fool, arro- 
gating to himself, like any other Old Fool in the uni- 
verse, all the wisdom of certain kinds going. For instance^ 
he pretends to believe that outside of Wall Street, no one 
knows anything about finance at all. In consequence, 
he dictates the financial policy of the government with 
all the assurance of a town cow eating hay out of the 
hind gate of a countryman's wagon. He dictates to that 
little puppet who dwells in the White House what he 
shall say in his message concerning the free coinage of 
silver and other financial matters with the air of a com- 
plete master. He tells Congress whom to place at the 
head of the Ways and Means Committee. His finger is 
felt in the Appropriations Committee also, and should 
it fail to pony up a couple of millions for the annual 
blowing out of Hell Gate, he raises " Cain " at home. 



151 

He is also possessed with the idea that there is but one 
city and State in the Union, and that is New York, and 
woe be to the sap-headed politician who thinks other- 
wise. Although always fighting each other like a lot of 
Kilkenny cats, they dictate terms as to political policies 
to the other States, and even go further and try to create 
the idea that without taking a candidate from New York 
for the Presidency is to invite defeat. Of course the 
Central Old Fool pretends to believe this, but he doesn't. 
He thinks he is the lion, and wants the lion's share, that 
is the milk in the political cocoanut. 

But the vanity of the Central Old Fool now and then 
gets a rap which is calculated to teach him a little mod- 
esty if nothing else. A few years ago he demanded the 
World's Fair and expected Congress would tender it to 
the great city of New York in a silver card basket, 
accompanied with a resolution of thanks from that sub- 
servient body for the honor conferred upon it by merely 
asking for it. When it Avas refused the wrath of the 
Central Old Fool exploded so loudly that Manhattan 
Island was shaken as if with an earthquake, and the 
denizens of Gotham have been fighting mad ever since. 

Still the Central Old Fool has one or two things to 
console him for this irreparable loss. He has the white 
elephant of the Democratic party, Grover Cleveland ; 
the black sheep of the Republican party, Tom Piatt, and 
Rev. Dr. Park hurst. 

CHAPTER IV. 

THE WESTERN" OLD FOOL. 

The general impression concerning a hypocrite as to 
his personal appearance is that he is lean, lank, lanthorn- 



152 

jawed and hoUowed-eyed, with an affected little cough 
which seems to convey the idea "I am not long for this 
sinful world." It always has been amazing to me that 
so good a judge of human nature as Charles Dickens 
should have made such an egregious blunder as to draw 
Pecksniff as he did. Why, all your genuine hypocrites 
are fat. And why should they not be ? A man who re- 
gards himself as perfection itself in his calling, of all 
men, is best calculated to take on an extra amount of 
adipose tissue. Look at that sly old rogue, Jack Fall- 
staff, the greatest of hypocrites, "larding the lean earth 
as he walks along." Look at Parson Trulliber, one of 
Fielding's masterpieces, as fat as any porker in his pen. 

Oh, no ! The lean idea of a hypocrite, although the 
conventional one, is all wrong. The hypocrite in re- 
ligion, as usually drawn, is no hypocrite at all. He is 
only a poor fellow-mortal suffering from an acute attack 
of piety caused by a disordered liver. Why, the greatest 
hypociite this writer ever knew was as fat as Falstaff, 
and a member of the Methodist church at that. He was 
one of the jolliest old coons in the whole church. You 
could hear him laugh a half a mile on a frosty morning. 
And yet a more covetous, grasping old rascal never pressed 
the earth with a number ten shoe. He was the personi- 
fication of good humor, when it cost him nothing. But 
when the stewards of the church, by way of a joke, called 
on him for quarterage, he became as sad and solemn as 
an obelisk, and put up such a pitiful cry of distress as 
would have drawn tears from an Egyptian crocodile. 
He was a fair sample of the whole tribe of hypocrites 
in the church or out of it. 

This is, we confess, a rather round-about way to get 
at the Western Old Fool, but there are so many points of 



153 



resemblance between them that we could not well pro- 
ceed without having taken the course we have. 

Your genuine Western Old Fool is noisy to begin with. 
His lung power is terrific, and when he opens his mouth 
in Congress, which is as often as he gets a chance, the 
vast building rocks with the volume of sound, as if an 
earthquake was passing. His favorite topic is the tariff, 
of which he is a complete master, and the way he makes 
the fur fly from the protective tariff barons of the East 
is a sight to behold. He poses as the farmer's friend, 
and yet the latter has no use for him, and will not even 
admit him into his order. He is the most prolific mem- 
ber of either House or Senate, and his "wooden" speeches 
are piled breast high in the lumber room of the govern- 
ment printing office. 

His own having produced Abraham Lincoln, he looks 
with disdain upon the pigmy politicians of the other sec- 
tions. Possessing the Mississippi river, he scarcely deigns 
to look out of his window as the train crosses the insig- 
nificant streams of the East. From that region of vast- 
ness, velocity and vice, when he gets to Washington he 
is cramped. And yet the poor old 2^oose, who has never 
been inside the Capitol of the nation before, struts down 
Pennsylvania avenue to the White House with all the 
complacency of a future occupant. He is shown into 
the gree7i room, and after cooling his heels for a couple 
of hours without having obtained an audience of His 
Majesty, leaves there a sadder if not a wiser man. 

He is a born financier, and would long since have 
flooded the whole country with an irredeemable paper 
currency could he have had his way. 

But the Western Old Fool has one redeeming trait. 
He can be convinced of his error and become a wiser 



154 



man. Eecognizing this fact, we commend to him the 
following wise suggestion, which lately came into our 
possession — it does not matter how : 

"He who thinks he knows it all, 
Is sure upon his nose to fall, 
But he who sometimes has a doubt 
Of this, will thereby save his snout." 

CHAPTEK V. 

THE PACIFIC OLD FOOL. 

Every schoolboy or girl in the United States and 
Europe to as for that matter, has heard of the mammoth 
trees of California,but not one, we dare say, in a hundred 
ever read a line of the mammoth Old Fools who flourish 
in the same highly-favored and gigantic region. 

As the conceit of the Same Old Fool is always in keep- 
ing with the amount of his ignorance, we might expect 
to encounter some of the biggest fools in the United 
States on the Pacific Slope. Nor have we been disap- 
pointed. To establish this fact let us examine his out- 
put and judge the mine of his foolishness by that prac- 
tical test. In the first place, he brags of having the 
finest climate in the world. Does that show that he has 
any more sense than anybody else? Did he invent the 
climate ? No. He has less sense in proportion to cli- 
mate than any other fool under the sun. Then he claims 
that it is the richest portion of the globe. Well, what 
of that ? Did he make it rich ? No ; but on the con- 
trary it has been getting poorer ever since he set foot 
in it. 

But he says it is the "free-est" country in the world. 
We admit that, for the devil and his satellites, the hood- 
lums of San Francisco have thrown God and morality to 



155 



the winds, and in consequence they have no Sabbath, and 
the cowboy who has bagged the most game, that is, assas- 
sinated the most men is their ideal of a hero and a gen- 
tleman. The Pacific Old Fool has a perfect contempt 
for an Eastern gentleman, and calls him a "tenderfoot," 
evidently oblivious of the fact that a tender foot is much 
to be preferred to a tender head. Their conceit in dress 
is abnormal, and in consequence their "get up" is cal- 
culated to frighten children and nervous women out of 
their wits. Their favorite pose for a picture is sitting 
astride of a Texas pony, with a pair of boots reaching 
nearly to the waist, the heels of which are ornamented 
with savage looking spurs, which at this distance appear 
to be a foot long. As we climb their anatomy, we find 
their bodies encased in a hunting-shirt, and the belt 
which confines it is studded so thick with pistols as to 
lead one to believe he is the veriest coward on earth. 
Indeed his favorite expression is " getting the drop " on 
his antagonist, and killing him without giving him the 
ghost of a chance. But, if his bodily environment is 
unique, his head gfar is sui generis. It generally con- 
sists of an immense shock of hair, reaching half way 
down his back, and which appears as if it had not known 
the civilizing influences of a comb for six months. An 
exception, however, must be made in favor of his miis- 
tarhios, which are evidently well oiled and curled, to 
give him as ferocious an aspect as possible. Indeed fero- 
city seems to be his idea as to gentility. Surmounting 
all this mass of hair and whiskers comes the crowning 
piece in the shape of an immense Mexican sombrero, 
which throws, as it were, all his other perfections in the 
shade. And this is a faithful picture of the Pacific Old 
Fool, whose conceit causes him to speak with contempt 



156 

of the effete civilization of the East. A pretty specimen 
indeed to view with contempt anything — except him- 
self. 

But we have already given him much more space than 
he deserves, and at this point we drop him and leave him 
alone in his glory. 

CHAPTER VI. 

THE SOUTHERIS^ OLD FOOL. 

It is a well-known fact that all warm countries, when 
well watered, are noted for their rank, luxuriant and 
abundant vegetation. But whether the climate of a 
country or section has anything to do with the rankness 
of its typical fools we are not prepared to say. Be this 
as it may, of all the fools extant the, Southern Old Fool 
takes the cake. They are divided into two great south- 
ern classes, which, by way of distinction, we shall call 
the ante-bellum and the post-bellum species. We will 
begin with the ante-bellum tirst. This species of Old 
Fool lives almost wholly in the past. He cannot accom- 
modate himself to his modern environments, and as he 
cannot persuade the rest of his progressive fellow-citizens 
to revert to the effete customs of the past, he thereby be- 
comes solitary as well as singular. His favorite topic in 
conversation or in print is, "The good old times before 
the war." Of course he claims cavalier descent. This 
specimen first appeared in history as a distinct species 
during the Crusades. Richard Cour de Lion was the 
most shining example of the tribe in his day. He is 
then seen for several centuries flitting over Europe, and 
calling himself a "Knight in the days of chivalry." But 
when chivalry was shivered by Cervantes in Spain, he 



157 

disappeared as a distinct class for a century or two, but 
reappeared in England during the reign of Charles I. 
Being again overthrown, he disappeared from public life 
during the Protectorate. But when the Kestoration came 
he was once more to the fore, and has held the reins of 
power in England ever since, and is there known as an 
aristocrat, which he is in law, though not always in fact. 
Well, it so happened about the year 1607 that the Eng- 
lish government began to colonize America, and among 
the rest along came the ancestors of the Ante-Bellum Old 
Fool. A lazier set never set foot on any shore. They 
called themselves of "gentle blood," to which many of 
them had a right from being the natural sons of aristo- 
cratic scape-graces and libertines in England. From the 
very first he was sensitive and lazy, so much so that 
Captain John Smith, who had to contend with him at 
Jamestown, found him so much opposed to manual labor 
that he was compelled to declare as the law of the colony 
that those who would not work should not eat. He was 
then, as now, too much of a cavalier to work, but none 
too much of a gentleman to live upon the unpaid labor 
of another. 

Being a prime favorite as a matter of course with the 
select circle in England, he found no difficulty in ob- 
taining immense grants of land in the w'lds of the South, 
and having erected a house thereon, procured a lot of ne- 
groes, and gotten a pack of hounds, set himself up as an 
aristocrat of the most approved order. This farce lasted 
until after the Kevolutionary war, when by the adoption 
of the Federal Constitution, his aristocracy existed only 
in his own conceit, as that instrument expressly forbade 
any titles significant of classes, and as an aristocracy 
cannot exist without this, it disappeared. The Ante- 



158 



Bellum Old Fool still kept up the farce, however, and 
does so until this day, notwithstanding the last prop that 
supported it — negro slavery — was knocked from under it. 
This last resource being gone, the efforts of the Ante- 
Bellum Old Fool to keep up appearances, were they not 
so ludicrous, would be pitiable. For a long time after 
the late war they called themselves "the best people," 
but as the main body of the people could not be brought 
to believe it on their own testimony, and refused to give 
them all public positions, they were compelled to take off 
their coats (a horrible thing for a cavalier to do) and go 
to work, or starve. Those who had the grit to do so soon 
bettered their fortunes, but the Ante-Bellum Old Fool, 
proud of his glorious ancestry, whose glory (if they had 
any) consisted in chiefly horse-racing and fox-hunting, 
would listen to nothing of the kind. He was born a 
gentleman, and would live like one, even if he died in 
the poor-house. This is his motto, and unless he changes 
it he is very likely to exemplify it. 

The traits of the Ante-Bellum Old Fool are peculiar. 
He is a Bourbon to begin with wherever you find him, 
and he is generally to be found at the corner grocery, 
whittling sticks and discussing politics. The sight of 
one in a corn-field, tobacco-patch or work-shop would be 
a curiosity. As the keeper of a museum is wont to name 
his curiosities to visitors, so does the groceryman intro- 
duce the Ante-Bellum Old Fool by saying, "Allow me 
to introduce you to [Judge or Colonel] So and so." He 
is too much of a gentleman himself to wound the sensi- 
tive Old Fool's feelings by calling him Mr. Smith or Mr. 
Jones. 

Socially he is very exclusive as regards his own race, 
when poor, much preferring to have negroes around him 



159 

than "poor white trash." Indeed, during slavery days 
he encouraged his slaves with the idea of their superior- 
ity to a Caucasian who chanced to be poor, Since the 
war not a few of them have gone into literature to dispel 
the charge of cruelty to their servants, and their pictures 
of a "Southern Planter's Home" is true to the letter. A 
fine house, surrounded by nice cottages for well-fed, well- 
clad and jolly negroes ; undeniable friendships existing 
on the entire place between the happy pickaninnies and 
the children of the "great house," associating and eating 
together like brothers and sisters, while the child of a 
poor white was afraid to put his foot on the place, and 
in some instances had the dogs set after him by the ne- 
gro chaps when he attempted to do so. Useless to try to 
prove the negro was well treated in slavery in order to 
appease northern fanatics. Better try to explain away 
your unfeeling conduct towards members of your own 
race. 

The poor whites are the people to whom the issue of 
the war meant freedom from the most galling social 
ostracism and slavery the world ever saw. Even now, 
when sensible people, foreseemg the fearful possibilities 
of a race conflict in the future, are urging the deporta- 
tion of the negroes to Africa or elsewhere, The Ante- 
Bellum Old Fool and negrophobist opposes it. It still 
delights his foolish heart to be surrounded by negroes 
and be called " Master." It may be in the course of time 
he will ascertain that the war is over, slavery dead, aris- 
tocracy dead and that peace, liberty and manhood are 
recognized as greater blessings to the individual man, as 
well as to the nation at large, than strife, servitude and 
descent from a suppositious great man in England or else- 
where, who for all he can prove to the contrary, may 



160 



have been the greatest rascal living in his day, and who 
only escaped exposure through the partiality or clemency 
of his sovereign. The great bulk of the Southern people 
are well descended from well-defined families in the old 
countries, and pot only treated their slaves well but their 
poor white neighbors justly. But the Ante-Bellum Old 
Fool would rather be the bastard son of a scoundrelly 
duke than the legitimate son of an honest carpenter. His 
obscure pretensions to "gentle blood" is unadulterated 
presumption and nonsense. And their conduct proves, 
that even if so descended, that we are mistaken in the 
honor that gentle blood is supposed to confer. No true 
Southern gentleman ever was, or never will be a flunky, 
nor claim descent from an inferior stock, whether it 
bears the king's brand or not. He is a gentleman by 
instinct as well as descent, while the parvenue is neither. 
Every neighborhood, however, has a Southern Old Fool 
in it, claiming descent from some old robber baron or 
cut throat count in Europe who accompanied that old 
marauder William III to England in the year 1100, and 
who by virtue of having destroyed the liberties of Eng- 
land, was ennobled by the title of Conqueror. 

But, with all his shortcomings, we much prefer his 
society to that of his opposite, the Post-Bellum variety, 
whose lineaments we now propose to draw as a companion 
picture. 

THE POST BELLUM OLD FOOL. 

Whether man ascended from the lower animals or 
not is a vexed question among scientists, and while there 
are many coincidences which seem to support it, yet 
there are so many conclusions which can be logically 
drawn against it, that it may be still set down as an un- 



161 

verified hypothesis. One great drawback to its full 
acceptance is what is known as "The Missing Link," a 
term first invented by Darwin himself. 

The highest order of ape has much more in common 
with the lowest order of its own species than it has with 
the lowest type of man. Whereas, were the hypothesis 
of Evolution true, it should more nearly approach the 
latter. 

But the theory of Evolution aside, the Post-Bellum 
Old Fool comes more nearly supplying " The Missing 
Link " than any other animal which has been so far dis- 
covered. In many respects he is an ape of the first water. 
One of his most noted characteristics is his attempted 
imitatian of wisdom. Because a few great intellects, 
such as John 0. Calhoun, John Minor Botts and Daniel 
Webster saw the shadows before of coming events, he 
turns prophet after the fact, and when one of the most 
doubtful wars in all history as to its final results closed 
adversely to his section, nothing on earth gave him more 
solid comfort than saying "I told you so." But we shall 
deal with him under present environments. His great 
hobby is what he calls "adapting himself to circum- 
stances." Eealizing that the social fabric of the South 
has been hopelessly overthrow]], he conceives the idea 
that the best possible course for his section to pursue is 
a servile concession that the South was wrong and the 
North was right. Lacking in true nobility of mind, he 
cannot appreciate the beauties of the highest type of 
civilization that ever existed in this or any other coun- 
try. In consequence, nothing delights more his sordid 
soul than in seeing Yankee notions prevail. Being a 
social nobody, as a general thing, nothing gives him 
more comfort than the poverty and humiliation of his 



162 



superiors in every worthy respect, and yet, strange to say, 
such is his inconsistency and apish tendencies that he 
would endeavor to create an aristocracy of money in place 
of that of descent and merit. Imbibing to the full the 
Yanked idea of progress, he has a contempt for such 
pursuits as have no tendency towards mere utility and 
money making. Denied in early life an opportunity of 
receiving a classical education himself, he has a con- 
tempt for it in others, and the only reason the old goose 
educates his children, if he has any, at all, is because he 
imagines it will add somewhat to his social status. He 
believes at heart that all book learning is a useless 
appendage, and not at all necessary to business. Should 
one of his tribe have sense enough to have an article 
accepted in one of our Northern reviews, it is generally 
written in such a spirit of abject flattery of ' Northern 
civilization as to nauseate all sensible people. North or 
South. Believing, as he does, that all Southern- states- 
men are more or less fools like himself, he has but one 
theory of finance, that of Wall Street ; one system of 
political action, that of Massachusetts; and one idea of 
government, centralization. The old imbecile thinks 
these ideas are original in himself, whereas, they have 
only lodged in his dull brain by persistent reading of 
of his only source of information — the Northern news- 
papers. 

Strange to say, the Post-Bellum Old Fool is a decided 
business success, and the duller he is the more success- 
ful he seems to be. You will find him installed as presi- 
dent of our City Councils, our Boards of Trade, and 
enterprises of large pith and moment where his owl-like 
gravity passes for supreme wisdom. He is frequently 
called upon in his official capacity to deliver a few re- 



163 

marks, and in so doing, nn]ess he is a man of more than 
ordinary common sense, he puts his foot into it every- 
time. As a general thing, however, on such occasions he 
employs the talents of some other man to give him a 
send-off. It is an old saying that every dog has his day, 
and with all due apology to the canine species, which as 
a general thing has sagacity enough to keep its mouth 
shut at the proper time, the Post-Bellum Old Fool has 
his "innings." Especially is this true in our cities where 
hustling, sharp practice and ill manners are considered 
good business traits, while book-learning, refinement, 
courtesy, politeness, conscientious dealing and fair play 
generally, are regarded as not giving much promise of 
success, and where success alone hides every fault and 
too often in many instances even proven knavery. 
Such being the case, of course the Post-Bellum Old Fool, 
who has neither the reputation of illustrious ancestors to 
sustain and whose chief memory of the past is when he 
lived on ash-cake and butter milk, is held in honor in 
urban society where he is the king bee on account of his 
wealth. No wonder that society in our cities as a gen- 
eral thing turns up its plebeian nose at culture without 
cash. No wonder that Miss Low-born, who has been 
taught by her "pappy" and "mammy" that she is better 
than well-bred people who are poor, regards it as a capi- 
tal joke when anyone in her "set is waited upon by a 
poor gentleman. No wonder that a soiree, composed of 
old as well as young Post-Bellum Fools, is a social me- 
nagerie, worth far more to a student of natural history 
than the most elaborate circus that travels through the 
land, for herein may be found birds of every feather 
from the vulture to the torn-tit. While this is true of 
many of our cities wherethe Ante-Bellum Old Fool, who 



164 

whatever else may be said about his idiosyncrasies, was 
was every inch a gentleman, has been "snowed under."" 
It does not hold as good yet in the country, for here the 
Post-Bellum Old Fool is in a minority. He is fast com- 
ing to the front, however, for the power of pelf is fast 
gaining ground, and in a few years we shall see the de- 
scendants of overseers, blacJc-smiths, tanners and rum 
sellers constituting our very best society. In fact, in 
neighborhoods this is already virtually the case, and the 
chief man in it, one who before the war was nothing but 
"poor white trash," so ignorant that he didn't know B 
from a bull's foot. What a miserable substitute for that 
splendid society, which developed character that felt » 
stain like a wound, which gave to its country such 
names as Washington, Calhoun and Lee in the days 
when honor, statesmanship and purity was the rule and 
not the exception in public life. That the reign of the 
Post Bellum Old Fool, south of Mason's and Dixon's 
line at least may be shot, is our sincere prayer. 

But would you know the ideal modern Southern man 
read the life of Henry W. Grady, of whose untimely 
death the poet sang: 

HENRY W. GRADY. 

Ah ! He is dead the wires say, 
Fit medium if such news be true, 
A soul electric, born to sway, 
He is not dead but lost to view. 

He is not dead, he cannot die 
So long as eloquence shall move. 
The human heart or dim the eye. 
With thoughts of power, words of love. 

Mourn Empire State, thy peerless one, 
Thy grief, a mighty nation-shares, 
Weeps with Thee o'er thy matchless son. 
And feels with Thee the loss it bears. 



165 

Thank God, that to the South He gave 
This mighty heart, this master mind — 
This gulf-stream warming ev'ry wave, 
Of feeling by His love of kind. 

Upon New England's sterile shore, 
Or in his own lov'd southern clime, 
In witching words he ne'er forebore, 
To plead with eloquence sublime. 

For peace and harmony between 
The sections torn by mutual hate. 
God grant his hope may yet be seen, 
The glorious sisterhood of states. 

The legacy he has left outweighs 
The glory of an Austerlitz, 

For peace and love and willing praise. 
Support the throne on which he sits. 

No meanness marred his master mind, 
Clear as the noonday sun he shone, 
And e'en in dying, left behind, 
A li.o-ht that must shine on and on. 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE EUROPEAN OLD FOOL. 

The average flunkey who dwells in a city indulges in 
much asinine amusement over what he calls the green- 
ness of people living in the country. He imagines that 
wisdom, when he shuffles of this mortal coil, will die 
with him. If the little sap-headed, spindle-shanked 
manikin could only see himself as he really is, he would 
perceive that he was only the parody of a man, and a 
poor one at that. As a matter of fact a typical inhabi- 
tant of a town will not begin to compare in profound in- 
formation with his country cousin. His whole object 



166 

in life, if a merchant, is to keep pace with his rivals and 
and watch the market. If a society man or woman, to 
cater to all the whims of fools as silly as himself, and 
even should he begin this wretched business, with a good 
mind and a well trained intellect, yet a few years contact 
with people whose whole stock of conversation is un- 
adulterated nonsense, will make him or her as complete 
a fool as the rest, and you hear nothing from him or her 
but "dress," "good or bad form," and other choice bi<s of 
criticism concerning the last assembly of dunces which 
was graced by his presence. 

Ministers, even, who preach to city audiences in any 
other than a plain, practical way, might as well be sing- 
ing psalms to a dead iiorse so far as effecting any good i& 
concerned. If you wish to see ignorance, not only of 
God's Word, but of science, philosophy and art, go to 
the city, and you will find it in perfection. Why, nearly 
everybody in a city is simply a hustler after money, and 
if he wishes to stay there, must continue to do so, or 
leave. Beyond "posting" ledgers, weighing coffee, sugar^ 
meat and lard, or measuring cloth and gazing at cost- 
marks to ascertain the very last cent at which it can be 
sold to make any profit at all, what time has a poor 
wight living in a city to cultivate his mind? It is true 
he makes a pretence of reading the morning paper 
while eating his breakfast, but what he gets out of that 
is generally such sorry stuff that a good healthy intellect 
would starve to death on it in less than twelve months. 
Now, these are the people who profess to find so much 
amusement over country people. The truth of the 
whole matter is, no class of people on the face of the 
globe can compare with American farmers on the score 
of intelligence and honesty as a class. He is not only a 



167 

natural philosopher, by having an almost unrestricted 
range for observing natural phenomena of the earth and 
skies, but it is to his interest to do so. No pent up 
Utica in the shape of a little patch of sky to be seen from 
the back-yard of a city residence, or overhead from a 
crowded thoroughfare, confines his powers of observa- 
tion, but the whole heaven, from horizon to horizon, 
blazing with jewels, is his by night, while animated na- 
ture, ''from early morn until dewy eve," with all of its 
sights and sounds, the music of birds, the roar of water- 
falls, the vast clouds piled upon each other, like Pelion 
upon Ossa, all these, too, are his, and thousands of others. 
Nor must we omit the coup de grace — the evening fire- 
side. Around these sacred altars are gathered children 
— future men and women — who are not only the hope of 
our' country, but almost the sole reliance for the perpe- 
tuity of our republic. From these come our statesmen, 
our orators and our poets; from these come our Lucre- 
tias and Portias, our Maryland Martha Washiijgtons. 

One more observation. The farmer takes time for the 
cultivation of his mind. Corn and tobacco grow while 
it rains, but a tradesman's crop needs continual cultiva- 
tion, and so while the latter is at his shop on the look- 
out for stray customers, the latter is sitting upon a split- 
bottomed chair, with a cheerful log fire in front of him, 
reading some masterpiece of the human mind, or per- 
haps still better, making himself yet more familiar with 
the marvelous story of the Son of Mary. 

But it is high time we were coming to the point of 
this article. We set out to describe a set of Old Fools 
with which all our American readers are more or less fa- 
miliar. We mean the European Old Fool. There is 
so much in common between him and the City Old Fool 



168 



that we could not resist the temptation to give the latter 
a whack by way of preface. 

We will now endeavor to show to an enlightened but 
appreciative American public that the man whom they 
have heretofore so much delighted to honor, because 
"he's English, you know," is simply the same Old Fool 
whom we have been describing all along. He has every 
trait of the universal tribe, only his "knowing it all" has 
more cock-su redness about it than all the rest put to- 
gether, while his insolence is perfectly sublime. He 
generally hails from Britain, but to make sure, we shall 
call him the European Old Fool. In nearly every case 
he has written a book before coming hither, and when 
he has gotten about all the American dollars he ever ex- 
pects to get, he pays us a visit. His reception is most 
flattering. All the Anglo-maniacs in the country honor 
him by wining and dining and monocles. His journey 
through the country is like a triumphal procession. In 
due course of time he leaves us. Hardly has he gotten 
back to "Luunun" before he is out in a publication, in- 
tended to be sarcastic, in which he endeavors to belittle 
everything he either saw, heard, felt or smelt. And if 
we may judge from the stress he lays upon the latter 
sensation, we would infer that American odors possessed 
an irresistible attraction for him while on this side of 
the Atlantic. He professes to have discovered that every 
American city has a smell peculiar to itself. From 
whence we may conclude that even if lacking in anything 
else, he is certainly an authority on foul odors, and we 
believe our government would do well to present him 
with a medal setting forth his nasal achievements. 

But we might put up with the European Old Fool if 
he would confine himself to smelling our cities, but when 



169 



he goes to criticising our government, the thing is insuf- 
ferable. Just to think of an European Old Fool coming 
over here and criticising "the best government the world 
over saw"— a government of the people, for the people, 
and bv the people, when the people of his own country 
never had sense enough to govern themselves, and are 
compelled to pay a ruler (and a woman at that) several 
millions of dollars a year to do it for them. Just to 
think of an European Old Fool coming over here and 
criticising our railways, when even a lady is not safe 
from brutal assault in a first-class car in his own immac- 
ulate clime. Just to think of an European Old Fool com- 
ing over here and criticising our hotels, warmed through- 
out, and lighted by electricity free of charge, when the 
landlords of his own, charge extra for every two-inch 
tallow dip the traveller finds it necessary to use, besides 
turning loose his no-pay servants to eke out a living by 
"tips" upon each guest. Just to think of an European 
Old Fool coming over here and criticising our social 
system, when his own is so ratten that the jails of his 
own country are insufficient to hold its criminals, and 
who are sent over by the ship-load. Just to think of an 
European Old Fool criticising our women, when his own 
are compelled to work in the fields, like beasts of bur- 
den, or stand behind bar-counters and hand out "distilled 
damnation," while listening to the coarse and loud jests 
of men besotted by liquor. Just to think of an European 
Old Fool coming over here and criticising a country 
which in less than one hundred years has so far out- 
stripped his own (a thousand years "^old) in the science of 
invention, that mankind has censed to expect a new idea 
in Europe, and instinctively turn to America as humani- 
ty's best hope. 



170 

But all the fools on this side are not dead yet, and so 
in spite of all we have written, the European Old Fool 
will continue to come oyer here, criticise and ridicule us, 
and find a plenty of other Old Fools over here to agree 
with him. Verbum sat. 



171 



PART SEVENTH. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE CLERICAL OLD FOOL. 

"Fools rush in where angels fear to tread," and 
although prepared to encounter the Same Old Fool every- 
where else, we must confess that when we came in upon 
him behind the sacred desk we were surprised not a lit- 
tle. That he should aspire to the leadership of a polit- 
ical party, know it all in society and be a boss in litera- 
ture, science and business was a thing to be expected by 
any one acquainted with his characteristics. But that 
he should be found expounding the Word of God, and 
pointing the way to salvation is enough to make one 
weep. And yet it is so. That they are not called of 
God is evident from the fact that He does not call fools 
to preach the gospel. A man may be considered a fool 
by the world for doing so, and the gospel may seem to 
be foolishness to such as are wise in their own conceit, 
yet all the same the Scriptures give no account of any 
such being called to preach. 

Now, the Same Old Fool in the pulpit assumes as 
many shapes there as he does elsewhere, and the reason 
of this is also plain, for every Old Fool in the universe is 
the product of his own conceit and vanity. This being 
so, it necessarily follows that there are many kinds en- 
gaged in the sacred calling, and in order to label them 



172 



properly, we shall be compelled, as we have been hitherto, 
to give each one the benefit of a whole chapter to 
himself. The first then to which we invite your atten- 
tion is 

THE IGNORANT OLD FOOL. 

This specimen, while not so numerous as the rest, is 
still extant. He professes to have a great contempt for 
human "larnin','' as being especially wicked as well as 
worthless from a ministerial standpoint. Because, for- 
sooth, he reads in the New Testament that the Apostles 
were told not to premeditate what they should say, but 
would have the assistance of Divine power, they mount 
the stand unprepared, and in consequence such rambling 
discourses are uttered that no one out of Bedlam ever 
heard the like before. To say the Lord directs them to 
utter such nonsense would be blasphemy if the Old Fool 
had sense enough to commit such a sin. We have a bet- 
ter opinion of the Lord than to believe he inspires such 
foolishness. Owing to the inspiration of the founders 
of Christianity, many things in the present day are sad- 
dled upon the Lord, without the least warrant in Scrip- 
ture or anywhere else except in the conceit of addlepates, 
dunces and ignoramuses. Samuel Davis, one of the 
greatest of preachers, said, when asked if he ever preached 
extemporaneously, "No; for I think it is a fearful thing 
to talk nonsense before the Lord." But the Ignorant 
Old Fool has a horror in the other direction. He talks 
as though he thought it a fearful thing to speak good 
English before his Maker. The Old Fool has never 
heard of, much less read Shakspeare, and in consequence 
repeats himself whenever he opens his mouth in public. 
His style of speaking, which is sing-song, has one ben- 
eficial effect however ; it is conducive to sleep, and the 



173 

world needs sleep much more than it does this kind of 
preaching. But occasionally he touches upon a tender 
chord, as the following anecdote will show. 

One of those Heavenly-Whine Old Fellows was peg- 
ging away one day, when an old sister who sat just in 
front of him began to weep. Noting this, the old man 
raised his voice an octave higher and preached the Ever- 
lasting Gospel — which is generally the case when he 
starts. At the conclusion he came down to where the 
old lady was, and said to her : " Sister, during the dis- 
course I saw you er-weepin'. I've been preachin' the 
Gawspel for nigh onto fifty year, and I don't know as 
I've been the means of savin' one soul, and if I have 
saved your soul I am willin' to die." The old woman 
made no reply but wept the louder. Seeing which the 
old man resumed : " Well, sister, if I have not saved your 
soul, will you not tell me what part of the discourse 
affected you so ?" " Well," said the old lady, ^'If I must 
I will. About thirty years ago, I had an old cow and 
her name was Kose. And she used to come up just as 
regular as clockwork. One evening she didn't come up, 
and I went out to look fur 'er. And I said to her ' sir 
dan,' Rose! And she give me one look, and ah, that 
look ! And then she lowed, and when she lowed she 
lueiit exactly the luay you preach ! " Poor old woman, the 
great deep of affectionate memories had been broken up 
by the old man. We do not wonder that she wept. It 
was enough to make angels weep. 

But if the Ignorant Old Fool is ridiculous, the Learn- 
ed Old Fool, which will be the subject of the next divis- 
ion, is equally so, and we will now drop this one and 
proceed to pay our respects to him. 



174 



THE LEARNED OLD FOOL. 



It is customary in England when a man has several 
sons, to designate one for the Army, another for the 
Navy, and still another for the Church. It is manifest 
from this that he regards the calling of a clergyman 
solely from a professional standpoint, and that he is the 
sole judge of his son's fitness for it. Now, it frequently 
happens that the son he designates for the Church is the 
least inclined or adapted to that profession of all three, 
and hence, that he proves a flat failure, so far as accom- 
plishing any good is concerned, goes without saying. At 
the proper age he is trunked off to Oxford, where after 
studying divinity and philosophy under men whose views 
touching such things accord with his father's, he takes 
orders and becomes, as the phrase goes, a candidate for 
a " living," which is generally at the disposal of some 
duke or earl, who knows no more about the religion of 
the New Testament than a hog does about holiday. 

We are sorry to say that the same idea is gaining 
ground in this country. Whenever a boy manifests a 
tendency to book learning the very first view some people 
have is to educate him for the ministry. This notion 
once in the boy's head, he at once assumes that his Maker 
stands in need of his services, and he rather likes the 
idea of complimenting the Almighty by a tender of the 
same. In order, however, to insure success in a scheme 
in which only two parties have been consulted — his fam- 
ily and his friends — he too is trundled off to some theo- 
logical seminary or college, where, in the course of a few 
years, he graduates with all the honors, except one — a 
genuine conversion — and is ready for a call, not from on 
high, but below. 

Having accepted the same, usually some wealthy city 



175 

church, and been duly installed, he is ready for business. 
Great crowds of fashionable and cultivated worldlings 
go out every Sabbath to hear him discuss the Atomic 
Theory, discourse about Darwinianism and the Evolu- 
tion of Man, or descant upon the condition of the globe 
during the post-tertiary age. As his congregations are 
composed of the elite of tl;e city, who when not at 
church are at the theater, in the ballroom or at the card 
table, he is too much of a gentleman to discuss such 
things, as it would be the height of ill-breeding to do 
so. It is true that John the Baptist told King Herod 
to his face that he was an adulterer. But John, you 
know, was no gentleman, aud, least of all, a learned 
preacher in a fashionable church. In fact, his church 
was the most unfashionable the world had ever seen. It 
is also true that St. Paul spoke so plainly of righteous- 
ness, temperance and a judgment to come that he made 
Felix tremble. But then Paul, you know, was an out- 
cast, having quitted the most aristocratic church of his 
day for one of no repute. So it will never do to cite such 
instances as these to the intellectual giants of our day, 
men capable of meeting the Titans of infidelity with 
their own weapons ; men capable of preaching the gos- 
pel without Christ and Him crucified ; men capable of 
showing a way to Heaven without repentance and regen- 
eration. 

Of course, then, who but some idiot or outcast, who 
has felt the love of God shed abroad in his heart, who 
has been shown the exceeding sinfulness of sin in his 
own case, is capable of discussing such trite and thread- 
bare themes in the pulpit. As for the Intellectual Giant 
who discusses the lofty themes alluded to, such weak 
men are beneath his notice. "For the outlying, country 



176 

districts, where men and women are yet in theological 
infancy, such things are perhaps allowable." But to dis- 
turb the refined sensibilities of saints in satin and broad- 
cloth with such shocking themes as human frailty and 
wickedness are not to be thought of, and even if they 
are, by no means uttered. They would at once destroy 
that sweet entente cordiale existing between the fashion- 
able preacher and his select congregation. 

Now, to speak seriously, it would be a hard matter to 
decide which is the greater fool, the Learned Old Fool 
in the pulpit or the silly fools who come out to his 
essays. They, poor and blind and naked know nothing 
of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and they, worldly-minded, 
carnal, sold under sin, will never discover their mistake 
this side of Hell unless some divine son of the Gospel 
shall preach to them with the power and demonstration 
of the Spirit. 

Oh, no ! It can never be done. Human learning can 
never supplant the Gospel of our Lord. The world by 
wisdom knew not God. Sanctified learning and a sanc- 
tified life alone will avail. Paul may plant and Apollos 
may water, but God alone gives the increase. When God 
calls a man to preach the gospel, he calls him loud 
enough for him to hear. To feel your unfitness to obey 
that call, strange as it may seem, is one of the best evi- 
dences of your fitness, for not one who feels his fitness is 
fit. Do not be uneasy, however ; if you are not fit in 
reality the Lord will will never call you. God makes no 
mistakes. There are no accidents with him. If you are 
called, no matter how learned you may be, rely upon 
Him for power, not upon yourself. If you are unlearned, 
the call is a preparation to preach at the proper time 
when you have learned the way of the Lord more perfectly. 



177 

But do not, oh young man, covet the empty honor of 
being a Learned Old Fool in the pulpit. You may think 
he is happy. Not so, No man acting a false part ever 
was so. Even an actor in a theater, who acts a part con- 
trary to his own conception as to the proper way is never 
happy. For the sake of your own soul and the souls of 
others, do not juggle with the Gospel of Jesus Christ, 
and put it like its author to an open shame. 

CHAPTER 11. 

THE STRICT CONSTRUCTION OLD FOOL. 

Mr. Townsend, of New York, at one time a member of 
Congress, during a debate in that body concerning some 
constitutional question, said that he had always observed 
that when a Congressman wanted anything right much, 
it was constitutional, and when he did not want it, it 
was unconstitutional. The same state of affairs is found 
in every religious denomination. 

There is for instance, the Strict Construction Old 
Fool, contending for the faith once delivered to the 
saints, under the mistaken impression that he is one of 
the saints. He believes the whole Bible should not only 
be taken literally, but followed in the same way. Be- 
cause St. Paul was in perils by sea and land, in perils by 
robbers and his own countrymen, in perils in the wilder- 
ness and in the city, he seems to be exceedingly sorrow- 
ful that preachers now-a-days do not have these perils to 
contend with. This Old Fool is under the impression 
that if St. Paul were alive to-day he would be too pious 
to ride on a railway train, to say nothing of a Pullman 
palace car, and prefer walking from Jerusalem to Joppa, 
begging his food in the day time, as he trudged along, 



178 



and sleeping in the woods at night. The theology of 
such an Old Fool as this is composed of about nine 
parts of Hell to one of Heaven. Because the Bible says 
that the heathen shall be turned into Hell with all the 
nations that forget God, he will not give a cent towards 
the enlightenment of savages. In fact he is like the late 
Sam Ward, who when asked for a contribution for mis- 
sions, replied that people who ought to go to the Devil, 
were not going fast enough, and he did not propose to 
stave off their just deserts in that way. The Strict 
Construction Old Fool is a Pharisee to begin with, and 
like them he erects standards for the outward conduct 
impossible of fulfillment. To illustrate their idea of 
righteousness, the following is a case in point: A minis- 
ter had been recently called to a new charge. As is 
customary with the clergy under such circumstances, he 
called upon the members of his church each in his or 
her turn, in order to make their acquaintance and put 
himself on a friendly footing. Having called upon 
most of them during the week, he concluded to finish 
the good work by visiting an old sister whose name was 
on the church register, but who was not present to hear 
his Sunday discourse. Having eaten his dinner, he set 
out for her house, some two miles distant, in the after- 
noon. Upon his arrival, instead of being received with 
sisterly kindness, as he had a right to expect, he met 
with scant courtesy. He had not long to wait for an 
explanation. She was informed by the good man that 
he missed her at church service, "Yes" I says she, "and 
you'll continue to miss me there on the Sabbath day, as 
I believe in keeping that day holy." She further in- 
formed him in the same vein that she thought he might 
have chosen another day than the Sabbath to have called 



179 

upon her. The good man, now being put upon his 
mettle, began to reason with her, and in order to justify 
his visit, related the fact of our Lord's having walked 
through the wheat field on the Sabbath day with His 
disciples. "Yes ! I know he did," says she, "and I 
would have thought a good deal more of Him if he 
hadn't done it." This is the idea in a nutshell. Fur- 
ther comment is unnecessary. 

OIIJ^PTER III. 

THE EASY-GOi:NrG OLD FOOL. 

Every department of hyman activity has its catch- 
words and phrases. The Democratic party has for its 
shibboleth, "taxes for revenue only, sufficient to run the 
government, economically administrated." The Repub- 
lican party has for its motto, "protection," and claims 
also to be a party of high moral ideas. But its "ideas" 
are so high and its morals so low that no honest political 
student has ever yet been able to strike an average be- 
tween them. 

There is just such another Old Fool in religion. His 
idea of religion is so high and his conduct in daily life 
so low, that no one knows exactly where he stands or 
what he is. He is not "all things unto all men" 
that he may gain some, but in order to be popular. 
Having early in life noticed that it was easy to swim 
with the stream, and hard work to do so against it, he 
has pursued a time-serving policy through life. He gen- 
■erally joins the church during some wide- spread religi- 
ous interest when every one else is doing so, as he thinks 
it is the popular way, and he dislikes to be lonesome. 
Having "jined," the Easy- Going Old Fool at once pro- 



180 

ceeds to make himself "solid" with all the other denom- 
inations by saying he considers one church as good as 
another, anjd that he would not give a nickel for the 
flifference. When you take into account that his opin- 
ion of them all, including his own, is not worth a cop- 
per in the theological market , it will be learned how 
valuable his opinion really is. 

He ridicules theology and imagines that pure and un- 
defiled religion is to allow every man to interpret the 
Scriptures to suit himself, and in consequence, blames 
his own minister for ever preaching the doctrines of his 
own church. On the other hand were he to disparage 
his own and praise the tenets of some other sect, the 
Easy-Going Fool would be in raptures. 

Although life is a perpetual fight from the cradle to 
the grave, and is plainly taught in the Word of God that 
such as live godly in Christ Jesus must suffer persecu- 
tion, and although the Christian's life therein is pro- 
nounced by inspired men, to be one of perpetual warfare 
against the world, the flesh and the Devil, still the Easy- 
Going Old Fool knows it all and will have his way. We 
have already showed how he will sacrifice his religious 
views in order to be popular witw his brethren in the 
other sects, and then in order to convince the worlds 
the flesh and the Devil that he is not straight-laced, he 
is as often found in the ball-room and the theatre as at 
the church. Perhaps a little oftener. There is an 
animal which has ears like a rat's and wings like leather^ 
partaking of the dual nature of a beast and a fowl of 
the air. His time for action is neither night nor day, 
but twilight. The Easy-Going Old Fool is the bat of 
the religious world. Poor Old Fool ! Should he ever 
get to heaven he will be confined to its outskirts, unable 
to realize the abounding joy of the battle-scarred vete- 



181 



rans of the Cross, who in this lower world suffered the 
loss of all things, when required to do so, in order to 
bring no reproach upon the cause of their Master. 

CHAPTER IV. 

THE SAME OLD FOOL IN KELIGION. 

Mine host, when he would entertain his friends at a 
feast, always reserves the best course for the last, in or- 
der, no doubt, to tempt the already cloyed appetite to 
fitill further conquests. We would do likewise, and 
hence now invite your attention to the greatest nuisances 
in the whole catalogue of fools. It is almost needless to 
add that we have reference to the Same Old Fools in 
Beligion. 

Now, it might have been thought that he would not 
bob up in religion too. But he does, though. As the 
mathematician would say, he "differentiates." That is 
to say, there are many different species of the same genus. 
In order to define them more accurately, we shall attempt 
to describe each one separately. In doing this, as we 
have hitherto done, we may use terms whose applicability 
may not be apparent at first, but we trust that as we 
proceed to unfold his characteristics, that our meaning 
will become as plain as the noonday sun, or the nose on 
a drunkard's face. To begin then without farther pre- 
face, there is 

THE MONOPOLISTIC OLD FOOL. 

This Old Fool believes that the church or sect to 
which he happens to belong, possesses the divine right to 
freeze out every other denomination, so that no passport 
to Heaven can be obtained except through its agency. 
All the little sects throughout the country who have 



182 

been retailing salvation to their respective neighbor- 
hoods, must cease to do business on their own account, 
and take stock in the Great Religious Trust, or be crushed 
out of existence. The Monopolistic Old Fool is some- 
times a bear, but his favorite role is a bull, as he much 
prefers goring to hugging. But he does not hesitate to 
use any means in order to "corner" the religious market. 
In fact, one of his favorite maxims is that the ends 
justify the means. That he has practiced what he 
preaches all history verifies. In consequence he has not 
hesitated to burn a heretic whenever he imagined his re- 
ligious monopoly was in danger of reform. As it would 
never do for a monopoly to fail to honor all the drafts 
of credulity which it has issued, the Monopolistic Old 
Fool also claims infallibility. He is not all singular in 
this, however, as every other Old Fool who ever lived 
claimed the same thing. He also claims that he is the 
vice-gerent of God on earth. There is no denying the 
fact that many of them have had vice enough to be 
gerents of the Devil, but whether one ever existed who 
had goodness enough to stand in God's stead, history 
does not record. But all these assumptions are of a 
piece, as witness the following order of his qualities,, 
which for the sake of lucidity we will put in a syllogistic 
form : 

I am the vice-gerent of God on earth. 

God cannot err. 

Therefore, I am infallible. 
But he does not stop here. He says that he is the 
vicar of Jesus Christ on earth, and as Christ was holy, 
so is he, and hence he permits himself to be called His 
Holiness. How shall we characterize the conceit of such 
an Old Fool as this^ The English, as well as every 



183 

other language, stands bankrupt before it. There is no 
word for it. It is untranslatable. To estimate the harm 
he has done is beyond all calculation also. He has done 
more to bring the Christian religion into contempt and 
ridicule than all the sceptics, atheists, agnostics and in- 
fidels who ever lived or ever will live to the end of time. 
Possessing a grain of truth to a bushel of chaff, he has 
caused earnest souls in all the ages since he first appeared 
on earth, to embrace a whole mass of superstition in or- 
der to come at it, and although shorn of his power to-day 
to do harm by force, and yet allowed to do good without 
restriction, he still calls for the secular arm. Were he 
infallible he would not need it nor ask for it. Hence he 
is a sham and a humbug of the earth earthy. Hia 
Holiness ! Bosh ! 

CHAPTEK V. 

THE COMPROMISING OLD FOOL. 

A straight line is defined by mathematicians as the 
shortest distance between two points. In keeping with 
this definition there are other ideas in connection with it 
which the bare axiom overlooks, but which nevertheless 
enables one to draw some very correct as well as far- 
reaching conclusions. For instance, a straight line is 
the most illiberal, inflexible, and therefore uncompro- 
mising thing in the universe. It bends neither to the 
right nor the left, neither curves upward nor bends 
downward. It goes straight from one point to the other. 
Should even a mountain intervene, it must either be got- 
ten out of the way or tunneled through its interior. 
Owing to its nature it is a symbol of Justice, of Truth, 
of Kectitude. Of justice that will not swerve, though 
the heavens fall. Of truth that will not compromise, 



184 

but swear, if need be, to its own hurt. Of rectitude 
that would oppose a world in arms, rather than "bend 
the pregnant hinges of the knee that thrift might follow 
fawning." 

This introduction is sufficient to indicate the peculiar 
kind of an Old Fool we are after in this chapter. 

In order to come at him at once, it will be best to 
draw a pen and ink sketch of his features or character- 
istics first, and then examine his work afterwards. In 
the first place, then, realizing that his life is "crooked" 
and devious, and being aware of the fact that the word 
"compromising" is in bad odor as applied to character, 
he has euphemized it by using in its stead that other 
more genteel term, "liberal." Hence he would be kno.vn 
as a liberal-minded man, as that definition is very pleas- 
ing to all his fellow-fools, and makes him decidedly 
popular with sceptics, worldlings and shallow thinkers 
in the church as well as out of it. 

When the Compromising Old Fool is a minister (we 
will not say of the gospel of Jesus Christ, for that is a 
misnomer), he is so latitudinarian in his views that he is 
always a great favorite with that class of church mem- 
bers who see no harm in visiting theatres, horse-races 
and ball-rooms, and whose leisure hours at home are 
spent in poring over trashy novels, or playing whist and 
progressive euchre, when not engaged in the more agree- 
able recreation of ridiculing the really pious people of 
their own denomination. 

This Old Fool is also a great favorite with sceptics, as 
he has eliminated Hell from the Scriptures, and that 
was the only difficulty which scepticism wished to see 
overcome in the Word of God. Henceforth, while listen- 
ing to his little essays on "the moralities," they can 
either go to sleep or pursue some favorite train of thought 



185 

touching "The Missing Link in Darwin's System of 
Evolution" without being in the least disturbed, as was 
that old Roman barbarian, Felix, who heard and trem- 
bled, as Paul reasoned of righteousness, temperance and 
a judgment to come. 

This Old Fool is also very popular with that highly 
cultured portion of the female population who, it would 
seem, prefer going to Hell to having the word used in 
the pulpit. Nor is he less popular with all those moral 
Old Fools who have substituted their own immaculate 
perfections for the blood of Jesus Christ. This indeed 
is quite natural, seeing that the Compromising Old Fool 
makes moral perfection possible to man without the as- 
sisting grace of God. In theology he concedes the 
Fatherhood of God, but has his doubts concerning the 
brotherhood of man. In this he is consistent with him- 
self, as he is half inclined to Darwinism, and imagines 
no doubt he is a lineal descendant of a higher order of 
Simian ancestry than the ignoble progeny of common 
monkeys. It goes without saying that he has so com- 
promised the Scriptures that were he to give us a new 
translation there would be so much "sweetness and light" 
in his new version that Oscar himself would go Wilde 
over it. All those terrible passages which tell of the 
doom of the finally impenitent would be eliminated, and 
in their stead a chapter on "Probation After Death" 
would be inserted. But to speak seiiously, the harm 
this old compromiser has done and is still doing is be- 
yond the power of man to estimate. At one time God's 
people were peculiar. Now they are so much like the 
common run of respectable sinners that no one can tell 
the difference. All this is the work of the Compromising 
Old Fool. In his zeal for numbers he has so tortured 
the Word of God, that hand-shaking has superseded 



186 



heart-shaking nearly altogether as a sign of repentance 
and Godly sorrow. Those old ministers of the gospel 
who have for years declared the whole counsel of God, 
and beneath whose powerful appeals men and women 
fell, as if shot dead with a rifle, are no more in honor 
nor in demand, and are compelled to take back seats. 
God bless their dear old souls. Their very peculiarities 
convince us there are some who have not bowed their 
knees to the modern Baal, nor made shipwreck of a good 
conscience by making merchandise of the Word of God. 
All honor to them, and shame to the clerical mounte- 
banks who, as men-pleasers, have made the Word of God 
of none effect. 

Very often the Compromising Old Fool essays the role 
of a statesman and enters the political arena. But he 
never enters there as a combatant, but a trimmer. The 
only issue between the two old parties, to hear him tell 
it, is one of men, not of measures, and he is one of the 
men. He has no positive convictions on any subject, 
except that good men should hold office, and that he is 
one of the best. When once in power, he will always 
placate an enemy at the expense of a friend in order to 
retain office. When accused of treachery to his party, 
he has always some compromising reply at hand. In 
short, he more resembles a bat than anything else in his 
make-up, trimming between darkness and light, and 
puzzling naturalists to decide whether he is really a 
beast of the field or a fowl of the air. 

We could say a great deal more concerning the Com- 
promising Old Fool as a judge or a lawyer, but knowing 
that that keen-witted fraternity will anticipate anything 
we might say of him in that relation, we turn him over 
to them at this juncture, and will now proceed to pay 



187 



our best respects to his opposite— the Uncompromising 
Old Fool. 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE Ui^COMPROMISIKG OLD FOOL. 

If Abraham Lincoln had done or said nothing else to 
transmit his greatness to generations yet unborn, his 
Gettysburg speech alone would have shown him to be 
one of the greatest men of his age. Among other things 
which he uttered on that memorial occasion was this: 
"In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty, and in 
all things charity." This is a short but comprehensive 
statement of the whole duty of a man in respect to all 
other men as regards the exercise of his mental as well 
as moral powers. In this mighty sentence is the whole 
problem of human liberty set forth and demonstrated. 
It is applicable to every crisis in human affairs, and 
points out not only the pathway of safety but of duty 
and wisdom also. 

And yet notwithstanding the science of government 
itself is only a compromise between a state of nature 
and a state of law, in which each individual citizen sur- 
renders some of his natural in order that all may enjoy 
their legal rights, yet there are fools in the world and 
plenty of them, who are so bent on carrying their own 
points that they would reduce society and government to 
a state of absolute chaos rather than see their pet pro- 
jects miscarried. Take the United States for an illus- 
tration. No two sections of it have interests which are 
identical; the one is engrossed in manufactures, another 
in mining, and a third in agriculture. And yet the 



188 

Uncompromising Old Fool of a politician would legis- 
late altogether in the interest of his own section and 
allow all the others to go to to Guinea. 

It goes without saying that the Uncompromising Old 
Fool is always a sectional one. If he had his habitation 
in the moon, he would deny the Sun as a source of light 
and substituted his own gas for that luminary. Utterly 
unable it seems to make any allowances for differences 
arising from early associations and present environments, 
he would make, if he could, Hayti of one section of the 
Union and a Caucasia of the rest, provided he is included 
in the rest. 

In the domain of morals he is equally intolerant, 
imagining that he is a saint and that his peculiar species 
of holiness should be the rule of life, he forbids the read- 
ing of even Shakspeare, while as to Henry Fielding, he 
would not touch him for anything in reason. Although 
all talent is Heaven-sent and God-given, he would repress 
it unless it was exercised in channels that suit his own 
notions. He would rather hear some other Uncompro- 
mising Old Fool twanging psalms through his nose than 
the most entrancing operatic music that ever flowed from 
the lips of a Jenny Lind, Adelina Patti or a Christine 
Nilsson. He would rather hear the drawling of some 
Uncompromising Old Fool of a preacher than to listen 
to the matchless eloquence of Demosthenes on a secular 
subject. And yet this Old Fool is lacking in the one 
thing needful — love. The Lord himself encountered 
him here on earth, and addressed him as follows : " Woe 
unto you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites ! for you pay 
tithes of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted 
the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy and 
faith ; these ought ye to have done and not to leave the 



189 

other undone. Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat 
and swallow a camel." 

. In theology, it is the same way. Instead of trying to 
make his creed harmonize with the Bible, he endeavors 
to make the Bible support his belief. In consequence, 
he will always quote one text which may seem to support 
his theory and pass by a dozen which flatly contra- 
dict it. 

When the Uncompromising Old Fool is a fashionable 
worldling, he would sacrifice Heaven itself rather than 
compromise his social position. And so he is through 
the whole catalogue of human life. And yet you might 
as well try to reason with a stock or a stone. AH we can 
do for such an Old Fool is to recommend the following 
lines of sage advice, if not good poetry. 

" A thankless task has he who tries 
To chip and model 
The world to just the form and size 
Of his own noddle. 

CHAPTER VII. 

THE CONTROVERSIAL OLD FOOL. 

When Ahab exclaimed, " Oh, that mine enemy would 
write a book," he little dreamed his wish would be 
quoted in all ages as a master stroke of revenge. But 
the satisfaction of having your enemy write a book has 
its limitations, and one of the principle ones is that you 
do not write one in reply. If you do, that at once knocks 
all the "fat in the fire," and you go in with it. Silence 
is the most complete, the most terrific revenge. Nothing 
hurts an assailant so bad as to be utterly ignored. It is 
a complete assassination of his proudest hopes. No fow- 
ler ever spread his net for a bird and saw it fly away, no 



190 



spider ever wove its cunning web to entangle a fly and 
saw it escape its meshes with more chagrin than does the 
Controversial Old Fool when nobody will notice him: 
But alas ! All the fools are not dead, and Controversial 
Old Fool Number Two replies to Controversial Old Fool 
Number One, and soon the whole reading public is in a 
great stir to see the issue. Sometimes two ministers of 
the Gospel, both professed followers of the meek and 
lowly Jesus, both Protestants, will maul each other un- 
mercifully for weeks at a time, and as the boys say, make 
" the fur fly " at every round. Speaking of " fur," the 
Controversial Old Fool very much resembles a cat any- 
way, as the latter is armed with just such weapons as are 
sufficient for small and defenseless game, and is more- 
over said to possess nine li\es. Just so with the Contro- 
versial Old Fool. His claws are only long enough to 
scratch or to enable him to "climb a tree "when he 
scents danger, while he has as many if not more lives 
than the cat A dead Controversial Old Fool is not to 
be found. As long as the hinges of his jawbones are in 
working order, or he can manage to set pen to paper he 
will be found pelting somebody or something. Like the 
typical Irishman at Donnj brook Fair, with shillalah in 
hand, he will hit a head whenever he sees one. Now, 
what on earth, but a conceit that he knows it all could 
ever prompt him. But he will perhaps reply, "I must 
defend the truth." All we have to say in regard to this 
is that if Truth could speak she would no doubt say : 
^' Save me from my friends." And well she might, for 
generally before he is done defending here, her garments 
are deflled with mud from head to foot. Not one man 
in a million is competent to be a controversialist, and 
yet the name of the Controversial Old Fool is Legion. 



191 

If he edits a newspaper, he 's forever and eternally knock- 
ing chips off somebody's head, and trying to stir up 
strife. If a preacher, he is always harping on the dis- 
tinctive doctrines of some church other than his own. If 
a doctor, at a consultation of five physicians, he will be 
the first man to controvert the opinions of the other four 
and will debate the point, if necessary, until the patient 
dies, before he will give in. If a politician, no matter 
what other policy the leaders may adopt, he will have 
one of his own. If he has a wife, she would better be 
in — Heaven than to dispute his words as to the best way 
to bake bread, raise an infant, or darn old socks, even if 
at the same time he does not buy a pound of lard, pro- 
vide a cow, nor have a sheep or pound of wool to his 
name. 

But to follow him in all his ramifications were impos- 
sible. Were it only possible to tolerate him for the sake 
of amusement, there would be the same excuse for him as 
gamecocks, bulldogs and pugilists. But to pet him and 
inflate his already prodigious vanity by calling him a 
Champion of the Truth is monstrous. Sometimes this 
P. T. D. (Professional Truth Defender) is an LL. D., 
but not often. More frequently he is what he terms 
himself, "a self-made man," and this in a great measure 
accounts for his phenomenal vanity, for of all vain men, 
whose conceit is insufferable, that of the so-called " self- 
made man" is the worst. So bad, in fact, that it re- 
quired a whole chapter to describe him, which we have 
already done. 

CHAPTER VIII. 

THE SE]!?^SATIONAL OLD FOOL. 

The historian of the future will undoubtedly pro- 
nounce the 19th century one of invention. In no other 



192 

country of the world has the inventive genius of man 
been so alert and its efforts so signally rewarded as in 
this. Telephones, phonographs, sewing and knitting 
and weaving machines, and thousands of others, are in 
operation for shortening distance, making work easier, 
and life more comfortable, and still invention goes on. 

But as in the rear of e^reat armies there is always a 
multitude of calones or camp-followers who are on hand 
promptly at the dose of the battle to plunder, and who, 
during the time of danger, are conspicuous by their ab- 
sence, so in the great march of invention there is always 
a hungry contingent ready to seize upon the spoils of the 
mind and appropriate them to their own use. But not 
to be led away from the main idea by any digression, 
however pleasing or inviting, we will take one case as an 
illustration. When Mrs. Galvani, whose husband, as 
well as herself, was fond of frog-legs, was preparing 
their favorite dish in her husband's laboratory, and when 
by accident the frog, which had been skinned, came in 
contact with an electric wire, and at once proceeded to 
hop around in the most approved fashion, she, although 
a philosopher's wife, was nearly frightened out of her 
wits. Her husband, hearing her call, at once ran to the 
house to see what was the matter, and was scarcely less 
astonished than she was when he beheld this singular 
spectacle. This singular accident revealed a new science 
known as galvanism. As soon as it was firmly estab- 
lished, a device known as a "shocking machine" was in- 
vented, and from that day to this the virtues of "shocks" 
for certain classes of diseases have been steadily advo- 
cated. As a machine must be good for something, and 
as there was nothing else in sight to which it could be 
turned, it was relegated to that terra incognita, nervous 
affections, and pronounced a specific. As the hair of a 



193 

dog is said to be good foi its bite, which is the ruling 
axiom of that select body of cranks miscalled homoepaths, 
of course a nervous person must be shocked in order to 
quiet him. 

Now, although it may seem a little singular, yet it is 
a fact, that the intellectual and moral worlds have their 
"shocking machines" also, and the effects produced are 
almost identical with those in the physical world. As 
in the case of the dead frog hopping around under the 
touch of a galvanic wire, so have we seen men and women 
who were as dead, spiritually, as the frog physically^ 
moving about and giving every evidence of being alive. 
That only the mechanical nature of the mind, and not 
the spiritual life of the soul, had been awakened, was 
proven by the fact that as soon as the "shocking ma- 
chine" was removed, they at once relapsed into their nor- 
mal state of moral deadness. 

To go into an analysis of the causes by which this ef- 
fect is produced, would necessarily carry us into the do- 
main of psychology and metaphysics, and as we are not 
engaged at present in writing a treatise on those fasci- 
nating subjects, we forbear making any extended obser- 
vations in that direction, and will content ourselves by 
calling attention to a few well-known facts. For in- 
stance, in witnessing results which bear no seeming re- 
lation to their causes, but which seem a flat contradic- 
tion to them, the human mind is not only perplexed, but 
astonished. All men are cognizant of this fact, and 
hence every people has its wonder-workers. In the far 
East the juggler and the snake charmer are to be found; 
in Africa the voodoo doctor and the conjurer; among the 
Indians the medicine man, and among Americans, Euro- 
peans and other civilized nations the prestidigitateur. 



194 

They are all of a feather, and their ability is rated by 
the amount of astonishmeDt and consequent sensation 
each one is able to produce. Have we one in the moral 
world anything akin to all this. Horrible to relate we 
have. It is the Sensational Old Fool in the pulpit. 

This species of the Same Old Fool is as ancient as the 
rest. He is not the product of circumstances as many un- 
thinking people suppose, but the result of an art, which 
none understand better than himself. Having thoroughly 
studied and mastered the science of sensations ha is ready 
for business at the old stand, vacated by his predecessor, 
whose reason for vacation will be given in the proper 
place. Let us examine his mode of proceedure before 
describing him in detail. Having at the outset of his 
career, perceived that people who preached the gospel in 
the good old-fashioned way were unsuccessful from his 
point of view, and as success outweighs every other con- 
sideration, he deliberately mapped out in his own mind 
his plan of campaign. Being too ambitious to preach 
without fame, he sets his wits to work as to the best 
methods of procuring it. Realizing that he lacks the 
matter to make him great, he contrives a method to make 
himself notorious, and it may be remarked that notoriety 
is the same thing to a vulgar mind as just fame is to a 
great one. Some men glory as much in shame as others 
do in honor. This point being decided he formulates 
his method. AVell knowing that the unthinking multi- 
tude knows no difference between mechanical life and 
genuine, and unable to draw the line between sensations 
produced through mechanical agency, and deep feeling 
wrought by the Divine Spirit, he usually begins his 
campaign by selecting some obscure passage of Scripture, 
which apart from the context, may be made to mean 



195 

anything or nothing. This is Shock Number One. The 
interpretation he gives of it is so singular as to consti- 
tute Shock Number Two. His manner is Shock Num- 
ber Three, and his language, facial play and absurd 
gestures constitute three additional shocks, and before he 
is done he has achieved the reputation of being a very 
shocking pnacher. Then the battle begins in earnest. 
The truly converted and therefore conservative members 
of the church, who do not endorse his methods, and 
who through fear of hindering what may be God's 
work, keep silent, the worldly minded Athenians in the 
church sound the praises of this modern wonder-worker. 
The sinners crowd with church members to hear him; 
vast choirs are arranged to give him a vocal lift; all the 
pastors of the city and country for miles around gather to 
see him give the Devil a black eye; the sinners come out 
to hear him excoriate the saints and wallop the hypocrites, 
iind for the time being, no circus ever struck the town with 
such force as the Sensational Old Fool. Amenable to no 
body in particular, he becomes a privileged character 
and fays what he pleases. He is the ring master as well 
as the clown of the whole performance, and cracks his 
whip as well as his jokes after the most approved circus 
fashion. The performance is repeated all over the coun- 
try and by the time he makes his round no man in the 
United States, with possibly the exception of P. T. Bar- 
num or Benjamin F. Butler, was ever better advertised. 
But violent things never last long and so he soon be- 
gins either to wane or else in order to sustain himself, 
becomes so shocking that his most devout worshipers 
lose faith in him and forsake him and soon he falls be- 
hind some new star in the Sensational firmament and is 
forgotten. Poor Fool. For the Circean draught of fool- 



196 



ish and sinful popular applause he ruins the dignity of 
his high calling, compromises the church of God, jeopar- 
dizes the salvation of his own soul, puts his friends in a 
false position, and ends his own career by realizing that 
he is the greatest fraud of the century. But he deserves 
no pity. Having trifled with the holiest affections of 
the human heart, having made the gospel of Jesus the 
slang of the street, having ridiculed almost out of exist- 
ence the barriers, which have hitherto encircled as with 
a halo of glory, the humble ministers of Jesus Christ let 
him eat the Dead Sea apples of his misspent life in ob- 
livion with none so poor as to do him reverence. 

CHAPTEK IX. 

THE SUPERSTITIOUS OLD FOOL. 

It has been said that man is a religious animal. Now, 
strange as it may appear, this is nearer true in propor- 
tion as he is a savage than at any subsequent period, 
with this marked difference, or qualification rather, that 
the word "Religion," in his case, is only another name 
for Superstition. We will not, however, single out the 
Superstitious Old Fool of a heathen, as the subject of 
the present chapter, for he has some excuse for his folly, 
Neither are we writing anything to amuse the Sceptical 
Old Fool, who may chance to read it, for he has less ex- 
cuse for being irreligious than the Superstitious Old 
Fool has for being too superstitious. Having too much 
religion is bad ; having too little is worse, but having 
none at all is infamous. But we may as well say now 
as later on, that we have never seen that man or woman 
who had too much genuine religion. They are not to be 
found. There is a class of people, amid all the light of 



197 

gospel liberty, who still believe in fables, are wise above 
what is written, and will not listen to reason. This 
kind of an Old Fool is capable of believing anything in 
one direction, and utterly incapable of accepting the 
plainest dictates of common sense in another. When 
the Superstitious Old Fool is in the majority, he is a 
dangerous creature, as history fully attests. The only 
reason he is harmless now is because he is in a minority. 
J3ut to show to what absurdities the Superstitious Old 
Fool can lead his followers, a fine example, culled from 
a million will be sufficient. 

A well-known writer of the sixteenth century says : 
^* Jews are next to Gentiles for antiquity and supersti- 
tion. I presume no nation under heaven can be more 
sottish, ignorant, blind, superstitious, willful, obstinate 
and peevish, tiring themselves with vain ceremonies to 
no purpose. He that shall but read their Rabbin's ridi- 
culous comments, their strange interpretations of Scrip- 
tures, their absurd ceremonies, fables, childish tales 
which they steadfastly believe, will hardly think they 
are rational human beings. Their foolish customs when 
they rise in the morning ; how they prepare themselves 
for prayer, for meat, with what superstitious washing. 
Last of all their expectation of their Messiah, and those 
figments, miracles, vain earthly pomp that shall attend 
Him, as how He shall terrify the Gentiles, and overcome 
them by new diseases, how Michael, the archangel, shall 
sound his trumpet, how he shall gather the Jews in the 
Holy Land and there make them a great banquet, 
wherein shall be served all the beasts, birds and fishes 
that ever God made, as well as a cup of wine that grew 
in Paradise, and which has been kept in Adam's cellar 
€ver since. At the first course shall be served that o^reat 



198 

ox named in the 4th chapter of Job, 10th verse, that 
feeds every day on a thousand hills ; that great leviathan 
mentioned by David in Psalms, 1st chapter, .1st verse^ 
and a great bird that laid an egg so big that by chance^ 
tumbling out of the nest, it knocked down three hun- 
dred tali cedars, and breaking as it fell, drowned one 
hundred and sixty villages. This bird stood up to the 
knees in the sea, and the sea was so deep a hatchet would 
not fall to the bottom in seven years. Of their Messiah's 
wives and children, because 'tis written in the Psalm^ 
'•Kings' daughters shall attend him, and that one stu- 
pendious fiction among the rest. 

AVhen a Roman prince asked of Rabbi Jehosua 
Ben Hanania ' Why the Jews' God was compared to a 
lion,' he made answer, ' He was compared to no ordinary 
lion, but to one in the wood, Ela, which when the priest 
desired to iee, the Rabbin, prayed he might, and forth- 
with the lion set forward. Bat when he was four hun- 
dred miles from Rome he roared, and all the pregnant 
women in Rome miscarried with fright, and all the walls 
of the city fell down, and when he came a hundred 
miles ner.rer, and roared the second time, their teeth fell 
out of their heads, and the emperor fell dead.'" 

This one instance of a past age will suffice. We are 
dealing with the Superstitious Old Fool of to-day — the 
lineal descendant of this grimy monster. But some one 
will say, " Where is the Superstitious Old Fool of to- 
day ?" To which, by way of answer, we ask. What is 
the Romish heresy but one vast mass of superstition^ 
compounded of equal parts of ignorance, credulity, pa- 
ganism and intellectual babyhood, as to the laity, and of 
cunning ambition, self-seeking politics and Machiavel- 
lian morals en the part of its leaders, from the Pope 



199 



down to the lazy, Christless monk, who lives in luxury 
upon the hard earnings of a superstitious peasantry? 

Has she changed not ? Yea, verily, in her methods, 
but not in her principles. Can the leopard change his 
spots or the Ethiopian his skin ? Can a man repent, un- 
less he recant his errors and implore forgiveness? Has 
the Church of Rome ever done so ? Has she ever done 
so much as Judas in the way of reparation, for even he 
admitted that he had sinned in betraying the "innocent 
blood." Has the Modern Babylon ever condemned by 
council or otherwise, the doings of Catherine de Medici 
or the Duke of Alva? Has Leo renounced the right to 
burn heretics under certain contingencies ? Not much. 
On the contrary, what do we see to-day? Three hundred 
years ago. Let us look on that picture first, and then 
on this. What were they doing then ? Let anothrr an- 
swer : " That high priest of Rome, the dam of that mon- 
strous and superstitious brood, the bull-bellowing Pope, 
which now rages in the West, that thne-headed Cer- 
berus hath played his part. Whose religion is mere pol- 
icy, a state wholly composed of superstition and wit, and 
wants nothing but wit and superstitisn to maintain it; 
that uses colleges and religious houses to as good pur- 
pose as forts and castles, and does more by a company of 
scribbling parasites, fiery-spirited friars, zealous anchor- 
ites, hypocritical professors, and those pretorian cohorts, 
his Janizary Jesuits, and that dissolute society as Long- 
in us terms it, ^Postremos diaboli co7iatus et sacculi ex cre- 
/ne7itu7)i,' that now stand in the forefront of the battle, 
will have a monopoly of and engross all other learning, 
in divinity, and fight alone almost, (for the rest are but 
his dromedaries and asses) than he ever could have done 
by garrison and armies. What power of prince or penal 



200 

law could enforce men to do that which for conscience 
sake they will voluntary undergo. They fast from flesh, 
abstain from marriage, rise to their prayers at midnight, 
whip themselves, abandon the world, incur willful pov- 
erty, perform canonical and blind obedience, prostrate 
their goods, fortunes, bodies, lives and offer up them- 
selves at their superior's feet at his command. What so 
powerful an engine as superstition ! Which they (the 
leaders, well knowing) are of no religion at all them- 
selves, for as Calvin rightly suspects, the tenor and prac- 
tice of their lives prove they hold there is no God, and 
Leo X did, Hildebrand the magician, Julian II, were athe- 
ists, and which the common proverb among them proves, 
to-wit, the worst Christians of Italy are the Romans, of 
the Romans the priests are the most worthless, and the 
most worthless among the priests are chosen cardinals, 
and the worst of the cardinals is chosen Pope, and he is 
generally an epicurean as most of the Popes are infidels 
and Lucianists, for so they think and believe, and what 
is said of Christ to be fables nnd impostures; Heayen 
and Hell, Day of Judgment are all dreams, toys and old 
wives' tales. Yet they use them as so many whetstones 
to make their tools (the inferior priests and laity) yet 
cut not themselves. Of no religion at all themselves, 
they will make all others most devout and superstitious. 
By promises and threats they compel, enforce and lead 
their devotees by their noses, like so many bears in a 
line, while at the same time their object is not to advance 
God's kingdom, seek his glory, but to enlarge, enrich 
and advance themselves, and thus compel all nations to 
stand in awe and live in subjection to the See of Rome. 
For what else do they care ? If the world wishes to be 
deceived, let it be deceived. There are some things true, 



201 

others false, which they will not have the commoDalty 
take note of. As proof, witness their intolerable forge- 
ries, poperies, fooleries, unrighteous subtleties, impos- 
tures, illusions, new doctrine?, paradoxes, traditions, 
false miracles, which they have forged to enthrall, cir- 
cumvent and subjugate them, to maintain their own 
estates. At one time by bulls, pardons, indulgences and 
their doctrine of good works, that by promising their 
superstitious followers a happy life hereafter they may 
fleece him out of everything they have now, and so spur 
on this superstitious horse, he runs himself blind and is 
an ass to carry burdens. They have so amplified Peter's 
Pence that from a poor bishop he is become king of 
kings and lord of lords, a demigod, as canonists make 
him (Felinus and the rest) above God himself. And for 
his wealth, he is not inferior to kings. His cardinals 
are companions of princes, and in every kingdom almost 
his abbotts, pious monks, friars and clergy have almost 
eaten the laity out of house and home, and gotten nearly 
all their money besides. In France, as Bcdin gives us 
to understand, their revenues are 12,300,000 pounds, and 
of twelve parts of revenue the church possesses seven. 
The Jesuits, a new sect, begun in this century, [16th] 
have three or four hundred colleges in Europe, and more 
revenue than many a princess. How many towns in 
every kingdom hath superstition enriched ! What a 
deal of money by musty relicts, images, idolatry, have 
their mass-priests engaossed, and what sums have they 
scraped by their other tricks! Now if any of these, their 
juggling, tricks or impositions be exposed or called in 
question ; if a magnanimous or zealous Luther, an "hero- 
ical Luther," as Dithmarus calls him, dare touch the 
monk's bellies, all is in a combustion, all is in an uproar. 



202 

Demetrius and his associates are ready to pull him to 
pieces to keep up their trades, and the air again resounds 
as in the beginning of Christianity, "Great is Diana of 
the Ephesians !" 

" Now for their authority. What by auricular con- 
fession, satisfaction, penances, Peter's Keys, thunderings, 
excommunications and roaring bulls, this high-priest of 
Eome, shaking his Gorgon's head, hath so terrified the 
souls of men, insulted majesty itself, and swag- 
gered generally over all Europe for many ages, 
has contrived to hold all in slavish subjection, 
Avhile living, and cast a baleful shadow even upon 
their departed ghosts. The Bishop of Rome, saith 8ta- 
pleton, one of his parasites, hath done that without arms 
which Roman emperors could not have done with forty 
legions of soldiers, deposed kings and crowned them 
again with his foot. * 'Tis a wonder,' says Machiavel, 
in his history of Florence, 'what slaving King Henry II 
endured for the death of Thomas a Becket, what things 
were required by the Pope, and how he submitted to 
indignities that even a private man would not endure, 
all through superstition.' Henry IV disposed of his em- 
pire, stood barefooted with his wife at the gates 
of Canossa. The Emperor Frederick was trodden 
on by Pope Alexander III; another held Adrian's 
stirrup. King John kissed the knees of Pandolphus, 
the Pope's legate. What impelled the Crusades, led by 
that Superstitious Old Fool, " Peter the Hermit, " but 
His Holiness. What makes them so freely venture their 
lives, leave their native land, seek martyrdom, but super- 
stition ! AVhat makes them assassins, to meet death, to 
murder kings, but a false persuasion of merit of canon- 
ical or blind obedience which they instil into them and 



203 

animate them by strange illusions, hope of being mar- 
tyrs and saints ? Such pretty feats does the devil work 
by priests." 

Such was the position of the Superstitious Old Fool 
less than three hundred years ago. How is he to-day ? 
We answer, substantially the same, with this exception : 
The Superstititious Old Fool is shorn of the greater part 
of his temporal power, and as he has never had enough 
of spiritual since the 6th century — the beginning of 
Roman usurpation of the supreme power in things tem- 
poral — he is not so dangerous as formerly, though he 
still does business at the same old &tand in a modified 
way. Owing to a combination of circumstances, such 
as an open Bible, scientific liberty and the spread of 
truth generally, all of which he did his best to retard, 
superstition has ceased to be rampant in professedly 
Christain countries, and as Romanism can only thrive 
where ignorance prevails the claws of the papal tiger 
have been drawn in until the world imagines that the 
beast of the Apocalypse had become a lamb in gentle- 
ness. All of this is only shamming, however. Human 
policy may change, but human nature without God's 
grace never does. Why only a few years ago a few scien- 
tific and patriotic Italians proposed to commemorate the 
anniversary of Bruno, a distinguished countryman of 
theirs, by erecting a monument to his memory, and His 
Holiness nearly went into hysterics over it, because 
Bruno had dared to diit'er from the Antichrist of his 
day. Leo's wrath, impotent as it was, nevertheless was 
an echo from the past, when men of science were throt- 
tled like so many monsters. Why, even Copernicus, the 
colossus of the world in his day, was afraid to let his 
great work, the "System of the Stellar Universe," see 



204 



the light until after he was dead, for fear that he him- 
self would be burnt at the stake; and to-day, while 
admitting Science and Protestantism by compulsion, yet 
at heart she hates both. How does she live? Are all 
the fools dead ? Look at her laity still bowing and 
scraping at the priest, look at the priest, making obei- 
sance to the cardinal, look at the cardinal cringing and 
crouching before the pope. Were St. Peter alive to-day 
he would doubtless cry out, as did his co-workers, Barna- 
bas and Paul, under similar circumstances at Lystra, 
" Sirs ! Why do ye these things? For we are men of like 
passions with you, and preach unto you that you should 
turn from these vanities to the living God, which made 
Heaven and earth, and the sea and all things that are 
therein." Now, what has been the result of such con- 
duct on the part of the Superstitious Old Fool ? It has 
either compelled the intellectual giants within its own 
fold in all ages either to recant their most positive con- 
victions, as in the case of Galileo, or else leave the church 
and suffer persecution while living, and be denied sepul- 
ture in the cemeteries of their Catholic ancestors. Super- 
stition on the one hand and hypocrisy on the other have 
thus made more infidels and sceptics than all the Vol- 
neys, V^oltaires and IngersoUs who ever lived. Nay more, 
we veaily believe that if Volney, V'oltaire, Des Cartes and 
D'Alembert offer any plea in the day of judgment why 
sentence should not be passed upon them, that plea will 
be the Papacy and the corrupt Christianity it blazoned 
forth to the world as the truth in their day. Science 
and true religion can no more exist with the papacy than 
light with darkness. Let no one imagine, however, that 
there have not been and still are good Catholics. There 
have been thousands. But at the same time, there is 



205 

nothing good in Roman Catholicism ^jer se. Apart from 
a modicum of truth, which it is compelled to admit in 
order to be distinguished from paganism pure and sim- 
ple, it is simply a system of idolatry and hero-worship of 
heathen ages, so modified by necessity as to include cer- 
tain rational Nineteenth Century ideas to prevent it from, 
becoming the laughing-stock of the age. 

But some one may ask, "Why, since it survives and 
manifests so much subtilty, should it be called the 
Superstitious Old Fool ?'■ For the best of reasons. Have 
we not stated time and again in this veracious catalogue 
that the fool thinks he knows it all, and has not His 
Holiness proclaimed himself infallible? Have you ever 
seen an old fool in your life who did not claim the same 
thing ? Admitting this to be true in the case of every 
other old fool, why deny it in the most conspicuous in- 
stance of all. But having paid our respects at length 
to the Superstitious Old Fool, we will now proceed to do 
the same for the Sceptical Old Fool. 

CHAPTER X. 

THE SCEPTICAL OLD FOOL. 

To scepticism in its best sense the world is indebted 
for nearly all of its greatest discoveries. It is doubtless 
owing to this fact that The Sceptical Old Fool has come 
to the front in the present age as the acme of human 
perfection. Because the Superistitious Old Fools in past 
ages frowned upon daring investigators in science, who 
have since been classed antong "the immortals," the 
Sceptical Old Fool of to-day imagines that a hundred 
years hence he too will shine as a bright star in that 
constellation of genius, which now contains the names 



206 



of men whom "the world will not willingly let die." 
Poor Old Fool ! As all the planets receive their light 
from the sun, so he only shines in a borrowed one. Be- 
cause Galileo dared to promulgate scientific truth in his 
day when priestly superstition was rampant, he imagines 
that by assaulting the church of God to-day that a cen- 
tury hence some one will write a history of his. life and 
claim for him that he demolished superistition. The 
Old Goose ! He forgets that he is one of the most 
superistitious men of the day to imagine such a thing 
concerning himself. 

But it is not the Sceptical Old Fool as to religion alone 
whom we are after. It is our intention, as one whose 
object is truth, the whole truth and nothing but the 
truth, to correct a very common mistake in regard to 
scepticism generally, and when we have done so to the 
best of our ability we will again return to our mutton, as 
the phrase goes. A great many people are under the 
amazing error that it requires considerable natural 
ability as well as learning to become a sceptic. How 
such an absurd idea ever got abroad in the world, es- 
pecially when it is contrary to the experience of nearly 
all intelligent people, is indeed a mystery. Where one 
genuine man exists who is sceptically inclined, and who, 
after doubting, never rests satisfied until something con- 
sonant to reason or something better is attained in place 
of that concerning which the doubt arose, there are at 
least one hundred Sceptical Old Fools who hoot at the 
idea of the possibility of inventing anything better than 
ts'hat we now have, or disco versng any truths in the fu- 
ture. 'I'hey have doubted about everything until that 
faculty of the human mind which admits moral evidence 
has become atrophied as it were and is no longer capable 



207 

of furnisning proof to their darkened understandings. 
And yet a great many silly people are under the impres- 
sion that it is an evidence of brains to be one of these 
Sceptical Old Fools. Such scepticism as this and want 
of sense go hand in hand. We have one in our mind's 
eye now, who could gather all the fools in his neighbor- 
hood together on Sunday to hear him tear Revelation 
to pieces, and yet on that very subject he was one of the 
most ignorant of men. He attacked the morality of the 
Bible and yet at the same time was so lax in his own as 
to live in open adultry. Still all the other fools thought 
he had lots of sense. They made a very common mis- 
take, for a great many people think sense and meanness 
are the same. Even when one of these Sceptical Old 
Fools becomes converted and joins the church he seldom 
amounts to anything. The first one that ever did, 
Thomas Didymus, was never heard from afterwards as 
he left no gospel behind him and if he is mentioned by 
the other apostles, except cursorily, we cannot recall it. 
And so it has always been. The daring investigator 
may doubt, but he leaves something better than that to 
posterity. The Sceptical Old Fool holds one end of the 
rope and the Superstitious Old Fool holds the other, 
and as they are about equally matched in folly, to say 
the least, neither the one or the other will yield an inch. 
The truth of the business is they should both be yoked 
together, and perhaps in the course of time one might be 
persuaded to believe a little more, and the other a little 
less and thereby establish thi^t harmony which should 
exist between true yoke-fellows. 



208 
OHAPTEE XL 

THE PROGRESSIVE THEOLOGY OLD FOOL. 

While it is conceded that humanly speaking there is 
nothing absolutely true, yet the principles from which 
truth is declared must be so, or there would be no such 
thing as right reasoning possible to man. For in- 
stance we are told that God cannot lie. This being so, 
it would follow that anything He chooses to communi- 
cate to us in His Word is necessarily true. Not true be- 
cause consonant to human reason. Not even true be- 
cause a logical sequence follows the premise laid down, 
not true because it is handed down from antiquity. But 
as we have already said it is true because it cannot be 
false, unless God is false, which is impossible. Now 
certain plain and undeniable propositions are laid down 
in the Word of God, which will admit of but one inter- 
pretation. To say they will admit of two would destroy 
their entire force as a commandment or doctrine, as in 
that case no one could absolutely decide as to what was 
commanded or taught. These are the plan of salvation, 
the system of rewards and punishment and the final 
judgment. But God, as if mindful of the perversion of 
the human intellect, seeing how it would distort or 
explain away these great truths, has communicated not 
once, but all through the Scriptures these essential 
truths in language which can have but one meaning. 

And yet the progressive Theology Old Fool, wi^h his 
higher criticism and the like professes to have discovered 
to have read between the lines as it were, of the Word of 
God itself, and to have divined the mind of God, con- 
trary to his own expressed declaration contained in that 
Word. We are not aware that this Old Fool claims to 



209 

have had an illumination by the Spirit of God, by which 
we are informed in the Scriptures he can alone know the 
mind of God, but on the contrary to have made his dis- 
covery by a merely human agency, which he is pleased 
to term The Higher Criticism. If one were to judge by 
the literature of the present time, and had no acquain- 
tance with that of the past, he would very likely con- 
clude that the Progressive Theology Old Fool was a 
brand new specimen. A sad mistake, however, this 
would be, as it is on evidence that St. Paul encountered 
him at Ephesus and Corinth over 1800 years ago, and he 
was trying then precisely what he attempts now — to 
establish another gospel in place of the true one. And 
although their point of attack may have been different, 
the purpose was the same. If we judge correctly he is 
contending to-day for the idea that Hell is not endless, 
neither is Heaven, for the same language applied to ex- 
press the endless duration of the one is used with refer- 
ence to the other. As the logicians would say he would 
prove too much. 

We have always noticed thet when a man begins to 
realize that he deserves to go to Hell, he does one of two 
things. He either repents of his sins, and thereby flees 
from the wrath to come, or else he goes to arguing with 
every one he meets and tries to prove there is no hell to 
shun. Being miserable himself he wents all the com- 
pany he can get. But these Progressive Theology Old 
Fools are afraid to go as far as that and try to compro- 
mise the matter by saying that while there is such a 
thing as future punishment, it is not endless, but length- 
ened or shortened in proportion to one's guilt. Kealiz- 
ing that the idea of endless punishment is distasteful to 
sinners in the church as well as out of it, and having 



210 



some respect for the Word of God, despite his Higher 
Criticism, he strikes a happy medium by inculcating 
the modified interpretation of humanity who believe in 
salvation by works. We are told in the Scriptures that 
Christ was an all sufficient propitiation for our sins, but 
these Old Fools prefer it would seem to expiate their 
guilt themselves in Hell rather than to have had it done 
on Calvary by another. 

But to follow this Old Fool through all his dreary, 
transcendental nonsense is a wearying task, and we will 
conclude the subject by saying that while he is progres- 
sive as to his theology, he is generally the reverse as to 
growth in grace and holy living, and while exceedingly 
liberal as to his opinions, yet as a general rule he is ex- 
ceedingly orthodox as to his pocket book. 

CHAPTER XII. 

THE SAlfCTIFIED OLD FOOL. 

As might be expected, seeing that the Same Old Fool 
knows it all, that another class of the same genus would 
feel it all, and while Christians admit religious feeling 
as an evidence of spiritual life, in the same way that 
bodily feeling is an evidence of physical life, yet no one 
with any sense at all keeps his hand upon his pulse all 
the time to see whether he is alive or not. The fact 
that he is able to move, labor, eat and sleep is sufficient 
evidence that the body is not dead. 

The Sanctified Old Fool, however, discards all exter- 
nal evidence such as doing good to the poor, living 
soberly and righteously in this present evil world, grow- 
ing in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and 
Saviour, Jesus Christ, denies any conflict whatsoever 



211 



with the world, the flesh, and the Devil, and claims to 
have an internal evidence that none of these things move 
him. He has an instantaneous process which eliminates 
every carnal desire and makes him holy at once. Al- 
though the injunction is, "Grow is grace," he believes in 
jumping in. 

Now the only trouble with The Sanctified Old Fcol is 
that his belief on this point is contrary to the express 
testimony of the Word of God in a hundred places, 
while only a far-fetched interpretation of a few obscure 
passages of Scripture can be distorted in favor of his po- 
sition. But as he substitutes feeling for fact, the only 
way to get a true conclusion of the whole matter is to 
watch him. Now it would seem that if there were an in- 
dividual on the globe who could bear watching it would 
be a sanctified person. And yet we have known one of 
these Old Fools who professed entire sanctification to lie 
abed every morning until his wife had kindled the fire, 
fed the stock, and gotten his breakfast. He was abso- 
lutely too pious to treat the wife of his bosom with com- 
mon courtesy. But when descanting on his favorite 
topic, he grew eloquent if not sublime, and to hear him 
bragging on the blessedness of his soul one would wonder 
that a chariot of fire did not descend and take him to 
the Seventh Heaven at once. 

Several years ago the writer of these sketches was a 
resident of one of our great cities. He heard of this 
sanctification craze and determined to investigate it. A 
large tent capable of holding 1500 people had been 
erected on one of the public squares in which Holiness 
Meetings, so-called, were being held nightly. He failed 
to attend these meetings, but seeing a notice in an even- 
ing paper of one of this kind to be held at the house of 



212 

a friend, he attended. Imagine his surprise when he 
entered the room to find the Mercnrins of the meeting 
one N , a voluble Irishman whom he had encounter- 
ed some time previous prowling through the Post Office 
Department, seeking a government clerkship with the 
endorsement of one of the most profane Congressmen 

then in Washington. N was a squat, heavy set, 

beefy looking fellow, and as far from the idea of a 
sanctified person as one could imagine. In fact the idea 
of a sanctified Irishman is of itself sufficient to tickle 
the midriff of a miser. He had just risen as we entered 
the room and spoke as follows: 

"Me brithrin and sisters. I landed in this coonthre 
only six months ago with fifteen cints in me pocket and 
the gerrace of God in me heart. I knew nothing of 
this second blissing, and now bless me sowl I know all 
about it. And what is more me brithren and sisters, I 
want you to know all about it too." He then invited 
all those present who wished to be sanctified to come 
forward. To the writer's great surprise all except two, 
a red- headed and freckle-faced Scotchman and himself, 
accepted the invitation. Having knelt a short time in 
silent prayer, first one and then another arose and pro- 
fessed to be sanctified. But we had not escaped obser- 
vation, and pretty soon a delegation of elderly sisters ap- 
proached us, and wished to know why we had not come 
forward. Upon being informed that we did not believe 
in it, one of them addressing the writer, exclaimed: "I 
am afraid brother you will be lost." Upon being in- 
formed that I knew I knew I was lost as soon as I got 
in that crowd she turned on her heel and left. 

But the end was not yet. As soon as the sanctification 
racket was over, some brother, a little more sanctified 



213 

perhaps than the rest, opened his guns on the sin of 
using tobacco. First one old brother and then another 
gave his experience as to how he had been set free by the 
grace of God from this wickedness, until at last an old 
woman whose peculiar headgear, of a fashion forty years 
ago, arose. Her chin had an upward curve, and nearly 
came in conjunction with her nose. Her eyes, which 
were small and deep-set were piercing. Her whole frame 
was in a state of agitation. We expected a novel scene 
and were not disappointed. She began : " When I was 
down in Ann-a-Randle [She meant Anne Arundel] 
county, I had my pie-ip in my mowth all the time. Some- 
times I wanted to praise the Lord, and there was that 
old pie-ip in my mowth, and I could not do it. I prayed 
to the good Lord to take that pie-ip outen my mowth, 
an' he hearn my cry, and he took that pie-ip outen my 
mowth and flung it away, and from that day to this it 
has been glory halleluiah!" 

When the old lady had concluded this remarable 
speech there was a general hand clapping and shouting 
of "Glory" all over the house. As for my unsanctilied 
Scotch friend, who like myself was a tobacco chewer, he 
was so overcome that he dropped upon his knees and be- 
gan praying: " Lord I Take the taste of tobacco out 
of my mouth!" "OLord! Take the taste of tobacco 
out of my mouth!" which he continued repeating until 
he arose and declared the taste was gone. This closed 
the meeting. We may add that a few days afterwards 
we saw him on Pennsylvania avenue chewing the weed 
with as much gusto as a billygoat would a circus poster. 
We exclaimed, " Why, old fellow, I thought, you were 
converted the other night ?" " I was," said he, " but I 
fell from grace." As for N — , he wound up the per- 



214 



formance by selling sanctification songs of his own com- 
posing for ten cents apiece, and realized quite a snug 
sum therefrom. 

We have written this chapter concerning the Sanctified 
Old Fool more in pity than in anger, being fully per- 
suaded that a great majority of those who profess sanc- 
tification are simply the dupes of their own feelings. 

CHAPTER XIII. 

THE LAST OLD FOOL. 

The reader of this book must have been struck with 
the tenderness of its style. Why, nearly all of his liter- 
ary children are given the most endearing of pet names by 
their fond parent. And we will add that in concluding 
this veracious chronicle, for fear of hurting his feelings, 
we will not call the name of the Last Old Fool at all. 
Neither will we attempt to describe him, and we will 
give our reasons for not doing so. Here they are: First, 
as to his name. We never use "cuss words," and even if 
we did, he is such a confounded old cuss that it would 
beggar the objurgatory portion of the English language 
to do him justice. We will not attempt to describe him,, 
as we have a due regard for the pleasures of the imagi- 
nation in nearly every human being, and hence will allow 
our readers both to give him a name and a character. 
Suffice it to say were you to take every other Old Fool 
in this book and roll them into one, you might have a 
faint conception of what sort of an animal the Last Old 
Fool really is. 



^D 225 



4i^ 















op* r'^^, 





ov, - ';^'::?3,Mg • .-lo^ •^cm^r^i .0 




,0 



t . ^ \V '^.^ 



4 Ov^ 

^ ^ 






.^^■ 



:<■ ^x. ..V .'kS2s 








^ .'^fe^'. ^^^^^/. ,;^i^^. ^^^^^^ z^-, \^. 







LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

iiliiilliiiliiiljljiiliiilliliiiljiiill 

015 871 436 A 



